Acting Well

by Marshall Yaeger with contributions by: Ronald R. Masden, M.D. Roy Scheider Alexander Shaknovich, M.D. and William Rodman Shankle, M.D.

Published by Circles International under the medical supervision of Anchor~International Foundation

TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Introduction to the First Edition .................................................................6 The Third Gene..............................................................................................9 (A Hypothetical Timeline) .........................................................................23 Brain Theory and Stanislavski ..................................................................23 Static and Dynamic Theories of the Brain ...............................................33 Exercise .........................................................................................................41 Proposal for The Palace of Health( ) .......................46 Your Fascist Guru .......................................................................................51 A Preventive Cardiology Program for Russia and the World .............55 Permanent Change......................................................................................59 How to Prevent Heart Disease..................................................................63 The Right Choice .........................................................................................67 A Revolution of the Mind ..........................................................................70 Yoga ..............................................................................................................73 Preventive Medicine ...................................................................................77 Uncommon Sense........................................................................................80 Acting vs. Impersonation ...........................................................................83 Comprosoft ..................................................................................................86 Morning Preparation ..................................................................................89 Your Treasure Chest ...................................................................................92 Perceptions, Actions, and Results.............................................................95 Memory ........................................................................................................98 Hats .............................................................................................................101 Its My Hormones! ....................................................................................104 A Letter from Screwtape ..........................................................................106 Maharaja Yoga: Triumph of the Will .....................................................109 The Mosaic at the End of the Long Haul ...............................................112 The News on Fitness.................................................................................114 What I Do ...................................................................................................116 Pep-Talk......................................................................................................119 Fit to Play....................................................................................................121 The Placebo Effect and Our Compliance Program ..............................124 How to Stop Smoking ..............................................................................127 The Benefits of Acting Well .....................................................................129 The Forest and the Trees ..........................................................................131 Tobey Maguire ..........................................................................................134 Wanna Buy a Cheap Exercise Bicycle? ..................................................136 The Trip to Narrowsburg.........................................................................138 The Constancy of the Self.........................................................................140 A Personal History....................................................................................143 FAQ: How Do I Get Myself to Exercise? ...............................................145 Monotony ...................................................................................................147 Diets and Nutrition...................................................................................149 Losers ..........................................................................................................152 Report on Albert....................................................................................154 Acting Well (The Book Proposal) ...........................................................157 Willpower...................................................................................................159 Take More! .................................................................................................161 Crosshairs...................................................................................................163 FAQ: Diet Menu Boredom.......................................................................164 Memory and Consciousness....................................................................166 2

Envelopes of Knowledge .........................................................................168 Fad Diets.....................................................................................................170 Im starting my diet on Monday!........................................................172 Love.............................................................................................................174 Testosterone ...............................................................................................176 Morning Pages...........................................................................................178 Addressing Childhood Obesity ..............................................................180 The American Heart Association............................................................181 Behavior Modification..............................................................................184 Why I Cant Change .................................................................................185 German Spanish ........................................................................................187 Imagination ................................................................................................188 FAQ: How much weight can I lose on your system? ..........................190 Contradictory Science...............................................................................191 Metabolizing Calories...............................................................................193 FAQ: Should I snack between meals? ....................................................194 The Numbers Games ................................................................................196 Generating Self-Discipline .......................................................................197 The Eye of God ..........................................................................................199 That and Which .........................................................................................200 Does God Exist? ........................................................................................201 Gorge and Grow Thin! .............................................................................202 Quick Weight Loss....................................................................................204 Costumes for the World Walk.................................................................205 The Second Lunch.....................................................................................206 The Facts Behind the Cost of Being Fat..................................................208 The Sins of the Doctors.............................................................................209 Self-Help Book...........................................................................................210 Menu Planning ..........................................................................................213 FAQ: Nutrients and Menus .....................................................................214 Character ....................................................................................................215 FAQ: Do I have to make a commitment? ..............................................216 Acting Well Coaching Program ..............................................................217 Moderation.................................................................................................219 Compliance Rules .....................................................................................220 FAQ: Approved Food List .......................................................................221 Assume the Position .................................................................................222 FAQ: Should Calories Out Equal Calories In?......................................223 Panic Attacks .............................................................................................224 Variety ........................................................................................................225 Hunger and boredom ...............................................................................226 Frequent Meals ..........................................................................................227 Alcoholics Anonymous ............................................................................228 How Babies Learn .....................................................................................230 Scripts and Logs ........................................................................................230 Making Time for Morning Preparation .................................................231 FAQ: Portion Sizes ....................................................................................232 Sensible Care..............................................................................................233 FAQ: How long will it take to lose ten pounds? ..................................234 The Acting Well Telephone Consulting Program ................................235 Comparing Calories In with Calories ..............................................237 Out.............................................................................................................237 FAQ: About Changing Lifestyles............................................................238 3

Acting Well Technique.............................................................................239 The Script ...................................................................................................240 Spinners ......................................................................................................241 Closure........................................................................................................241 Correct Posture while doing Acting Well .............................................243 FAQ: The Food Pyramid ..........................................................................243 Biancas Summer Hampton Psychic Makeover Class .........................244 FAQ: How Many Calories Should I Eat Every Day? ...........................245 FAQ: Whats the best diet to lose weight?.............................................246 Mucis...........................................................................................................247 Autosuggestion .........................................................................................248 How to Measure Portion Sizes................................................................248 The Camera Obscura ................................................................................249 Listening .....................................................................................................250 Asking Dr. Weill........................................................................................250 The Real Me ...............................................................................................251 FAQ: How Much Fat Should I Include in My Diet? ............................252 FAQ: Who are you? ..................................................................................253 An Unsuccessful Argument ....................................................................254 FAQ: Is Yoga a Good Exercise?...............................................................255 Anxiety .......................................................................................................255 Sound Pollution.........................................................................................256 Theoretical Considerations ......................................................................257 FAQ: Shall I Accept Myself as a Fat Person? ........................................257 An Example of How People Change......................................................258 Acting Well at Work .................................................................................259 FAQ: Should I Walk More? .....................................................................259 Louis XIV....................................................................................................260 FAQ: How Fast Can I Lose Weight? ......................................................261 Orange Juice...............................................................................................261 The Magic Bullet .......................................................................................262 Colossal Blunders......................................................................................263 Why This Book Is Needed .......................................................................263 FAQ: Does your system really work? ....................................................264 FAQ: Food Logs ........................................................................................265 FAQ: Is It My Genes?................................................................................265 The Morning Track ...................................................................................266 FAQ: Are Aerobics Classes Good? .........................................................267 FAQ: Is This System Just Another Diet?................................................267 Touching the Envelope ............................................................................268 Making Life an Art....................................................................................269 A Fountain of Youth .................................................................................269 FAQ: Why Should I Lose Weight?..........................................................270 FAQ: Diets..................................................................................................270 FAQ: How Can I Exercise More? ............................................................271 FAQ: Are You an Atheist? .......................................................................271 What I Should Do......................................................................................272 FAQ: Chromium Picolinate .....................................................................272 Quarantines................................................................................................273 FAQ: Should I Eat Special Foods? ..........................................................273 Kinesthesia .................................................................................................274 Stanleys Diet .............................................................................................274 The Log .......................................................................................................275 4

The First Closure .......................................................................................275 Sound ..........................................................................................................276 Essays..........................................................................................................276 The Hormonal Effects of Acting Well ....................................................276 Seeing Yourself ..........................................................................................277 Self-Help.....................................................................................................277 Moreover... .................................................................................................277

Introduction to the First Edition

The following collection of articles constitutes a companion volume to the Acting Well Weight Management Program, which is combined with this publication. Most of these articles, which were compiled over several years, and which were written to serve a variety of purposes, are of the selfhelp tips and pointers genre. Some of the tips are presented in a FAQs, or frequently asked questions format (although nobody ever asked me any of the questions before, but there you are). The central theme that runs through this book may be unfamiliar to most people. One of its aspects is the idea that perceptions, thoughts, memories, decisions, and actions are all the same thing; and that each of these things is represented by a material substance composed of a number of functional units of neurons (many of them shaped like columns) located behind your forehead. Therefore, if you want to change the daily decisions your character makes, your problem is as material as wanting to remove the ugly rocks from your backyard in order to plant a Japanese garden using polished stones (or lose 25 pounds so that you can improve your sex life). In order to exchange rocks for stones, there have to be rocks and there have to be stones. You cant just wish things away, wish for other things to take their place, or wish for one substance to magically transform itself into another. You actually have to haul ass to get material things moved (or to activate and deactivate various neuronal groups). Thus, just as you cant polish rocks to make them smooth stones, you can only reform your character through replacement, not through wishing or magic. The good news is thatproviding you do the workthe rocks will absolutely disappear and the stones will absolutely take their place! The system works like magic, even though it isnt magic. Another unfamiliar idea is that there may be 1,000 ways to lose 25 pounds, but theres only one way to avoid gaining them back. That way is to learn how to behave like a thin person. If you fail to learn this trick, then once youve reached your goal weight (through any method you like, such as starving yourself), youre bound to revert to your former fat person habits that made you overweight in the first place. Your old fat habits are the rocks in your backyard that you failed to remove while you were starving yourself in order to polish a few stones. You wind up constantly going on yo-yo diets that undermine self-confidence while wasting everybodys time and energy (except for the quacks and hucksters who got paid for giving you terrible advice and selling you fraudulent products). A third idea is that behavioral changes (such as dieting or exercis6

ing) are acting problems. Theyre not imaginary, psychological, moral, spiritual, glandular, hormonal, carbo-protein, fat-gram, nutritional, or genetic problems! Therefore, if you want to be thin, you only need to develop a few acting skills to create your new character. Nature takes its course from there. Although the Acting Well weight management program doesnt involve restrictive diets, there are some daily meditative and fitness requirements (as well as a few prohibitions, such as against habitual snacking and regular days off) that beginners may need help observing. Therefore, this book may be a useful read from time to time, especially during the first 21-day period. When I considered how to organize the various articles, the least complicated method seemed to be to follow the practice of the Koran, which someone told me was organized arbitrarily, according to the length of the various sections. (This idea turned out to be wrong; but there you are again.) My scheme therefore puts the longest sections of this edition first (with the exception of this introduction), and the shortest last. This arrangement offers the advantage of putting some of the more complicated sections before simpler sections that build on more esoteric concepts, which then dont have to be constantly explained. Thus, we begin with several theoretical articles about anthropology and the science of the brain that offer useful ideas, for example, about why the program works for people for whom other programs have never worked. For example, it is my theory that Homo sapiens evolved its current configuration in a climate where non-carnivores tended not to survive (maybe because it snowed too much?). Large animals could only be caught periodically, on the averagesay once a weekwhich meant that our bodies evolved so as to thrive by gorging on meat once a week (storing fat in special cells), and eating bugs and leaves the rest of the time. (The Jewish custom of the Sabbath meal may be a survivor of those primitive days.) In our own time, market competition (abetted, in this country, by unwise government agency policies) encourages us to gorge every night of the week, which supplies most of us with too many nutrients that our bodies arent prepared to assimilate. Therein is an anthropological theory that reveals the most overpowering reason why more than half of all Americans are overweight. Finding a solution for this situation is one of the main purposes of Acting Well. I include no footnote citations because these days any good search engine will locate the original sources for any reference in this edition within seconds. I apologize to anyone who fails to find the opening articles as transparent as glass. The problem isnt the readers! If I had to start over again perusing all of the research materials I needed to prepare these articles, I would probably be as bamboozled as some of you may find yourselves while ploughing through the science of the brain for the first time. Fortunately, the eminent neuroscientist, William Rodman Shankle (in the article called Perceptions, Actions, and Re7

sults), offered to help me out by writing his own explanation of the mechanics of the brain as they relate to Acting Well. Please dont try too hard to understand the more technical sections. Let the scientific terms wash over you as you get the gist of the arguments and conclusions; or skip to later sections and come back if you like. Or begin the book again after you finish it the first time, and youll find the earlier sections more comprehensible. Meanwhile, observe the theories in action as you observe yourself learning, playing, and changing. Observe, especially, the activities of small children, and how amazingly their learning process matches the perception = action = results hypothesis presented here. (Observe, also, how parents who dont understand this process constantly confuse and misdirect their children through inconsistent discipline.) Many of the articles repeat themselves (some of them repeatedly) under the theory that familiarity breedsnot contempt, but...familiarity. That is, every new time you encounter the same idea, your brain matches it against a previous version of the idea. In this way, youll begin to build a comprehensible structure in your own brain of a new way to think about how you perceive, act, andmost important, how you change. Once you understand the secrets of the brain that relate to Acting Well, you may actually begin to perceive within your own thinking process the hardy manner in which certain simple acting techniques can help you avoid forgetting yourself andas a resulthelp you stay on the program. This first edition contains mostly my own thoughts and opinions about a subject that is bound to be controversial, but that I consider universal and correct. I hope that future editions will share many more observations and corrections (especially in cases where I have been mistaken) from articulate readers, program users, scientists, scholars, and philosophers who have benefited from Acting Well. As I say in the Acting Well videotape, The Magic Bullet, Im not your guru. Im only someone who started earlier. Marshall Yaeger New York, 2001

The Third Gene

The theory of the third gene views the transition from prehominid to human society not as a bootstrap affair that evolved naturally, but as a risky business that heaved from side to side on its way up. That is, our prehistoric ancestors were probably not formed from homogenous groups of men, women, and children, who stood up on two feet in order to walk into history, but groups like apes or chimpanzees that were penetrated by highly disagreeable individuals who played a hand in evolution, separating, like God or Darwin, wheat from chaff, and ruthlessly making sure, over the long run, and with entirely wrong motives, that the most intelligent would survive and the least would not. These ideas differ from Julian Jayness theories of a bicameral man. Jaynes suggested that human beings didnt become conscious until a few thousand years ago. Before then, he said, they received instructions from their right brain (similar to the way an inspired playwright hears imaginary characters dictate lines) which they carried out unconsciously with their left brain (as a playwright might mindlessly scribble down a characters sentences in shorthand). Jayness theory was a two gene model that assumed that all prehistoric people were alike: each had right- and left-brain capabilities that functioned pretty much alike. However, what about prehistoric kings and priests? Were they unconscious too? Whose orders did they follow? And although there may be separate parts of the brain that affect behavior and cognition, with one part dominating another from time to time, why must these different parts be spatially defined? How can every left-brain thing take place only on the left side of the brain, for example, if vision is divided between both left and right sections of the occipital lobe? Finally, if there are modalities in the brain that sometimes correspond to Jayness (and others) left-brain/right-brain thinking (which separates, for example, right-side creativity from left-side logical thought), these modalities may display other kinds of distinctions that arent produced according to location on one side of the head or the other, but by brain-wave frequencies, for example, or other, less familiar criteria. Thus, there may be more than two modalities. These modalities dont necessarily complement each other like two sides of the same coin. In fact, they may address entities as incompatible and different from each other as a game of football is from a game of bridge. It would be difficult to play both games at the same time in the same place. A better example of incompatible modalities would be what some 9

psychologists call rationalizers (such as logicians) and visualizers (such as visual artists). These two small groups of people, at the extreme ends of a bell-shaped curve that includes the rest of us, think very differently from each other, using different parts of the brain. They find it difficult to communicate with one another. [Full disclosure: Electroencephalograph measurements have established that I am a dyed-in-the-wool visualizer!] Some psychologists believe there is a more profound difference between rationalizers and visualizers than there is between left- and right-brain thinking people. An electroencephalograph can easily measure the rationalizer/visualizer dichotomy (which might be called front-brain/rear-brain). A machine, however, cant differentiate left- and right-brain people so easily. The real story of human evolution into consciousness may correspond more to a bell-shaped social model than a bifurcated brain model as in Jayness theory. In that case, there could have been at least three modalities before human evolution could begin, not just two. These three modalities, namely: alpha, beta, and gamma, could then form a bell-shaped curve in which there was one alpha and one gamma per group of 32, with a few stand-bys for replacements if necessary. All the rest would be betas. In pre-human societies, a one-gene system of sexual determination would produce males and females about equally. A two-gene system affecting social behavior (which involves random combinations of dominant and recessive genes) would raise one member of a tribe to become its leader through a combination of luck and skill. However, all the rest of the tribe would remain about the same from generation to generation. The story of Adam and Eve illustrates a two gene theory where two original progenitors combined one recessive (or mutant) gene with another (the second gene) to produce proto-human beings, who continued to evolve more or less through the same genetic process. This theory may suffice for a slow-growing, alpha-male dominated, pre-hominid society; but it doesnt explain the rapid and spectacular rise of human beings. A better hypothesis to account for our species would involve a three-gene system. This innovation (which might be considered a great man historical theory) would counterbalance the alpha-male already established in the group with another special member of the tribe (the great man, who was capable of creating human history) that could act as a ratchet in the group, retaining the species progress so far, mainly through death-surviving (immortal) symbols and objects, through a succession of life cycles, to assure the evolutionary expansion and improvement of the species brain power. This third gene theory is fundamentally different from two gene theories, such as Jaynes theory, which for all its elegance doesnt explain why human beings appeared and grew so smart so fast. In pre-hominid primate societies, there were (and still are) only two modes of behavior: alpha and beta. The difference between them 10

is that alpha behavior is confined to the alpha-male (head honcho and chief womanizer) in each tribal unit. Everyone else behaves like a beta. This condition describes Jayness concept of prehistoric cultures where everyone (almost) was a beta who followed orders presumably given by an alpha-male, who wasnt much more than a beta with environmentally-shaped powers. (This condition might be termed alpha/beta.) The alpha-males sense of self-efficacy, by definition, was greater than that of the other tribal members. He therefore enjoyed the most power and public favors of females. How conscious he was (or is) of his self is debatable. The most important difference that distinguished pre-hominid alpha/beta societies from human alpha/beta societies was the addition of a new modality, namely the gamma male. This person might have been comparable to Jayness conjectures about schizophrenic prophets. He was present in every tribal unit as a spiritual leader (or a gods representative on Earth) as opposed to the secular leader who was the alpha-male. This individual had special powers that connected the tribe to both the past (through recallable experiences, or the stories that formed the groups history) and to the future (through apparent abilities to affect the cure of an illness, for example, or to guarantee an afterlife); whereas the alpha-male, who was the tribes best defense against the many dangers present during the Stone Age, had to be firmly grounded and alert, at least at critical times, in the eternal present. Under such conditions it was probably quite useful to have a gamma assistant leader not so concerned with clear and present dangers, who could remember and foresee information that allowed him (among other things) to correct alpha/beta patterns of behavior. These patterns might create forms of evil (or immorality) that could threaten to lead the betas astray. Thus, the gamma-male could serve to purify the tribe and possibly forestall supernatural punishment. The dour image of Jeremiah with his corrective visions comes to mind, although the first gamma-males probably looked more like a Broadway musical, dressed in feathers and masks (which retained, or ratcheted, their supernatural, and thus immortal, symbolic significance), and singing and dancing even before the advent of language. An alpha-male wouldnt have been into such performances. A modern football team probably provides a clear example of the apples and oranges difference between alphas and gammas in early societies. The alpha-male on a modern football team is whoever is running with the ball at the time, which is a matter of luck and skill. The gamma-male is the coach: not part of the action, but often thought to have been born to the position. The women, the supporting players, and the non-playing audiences are all betas. It seems likely that when the human race first emerged, the gamma-male was rarely, if ever, the same person as the units alpha11

male. (Todays coach, on the other hand, can be a former football star, a possibility that should probably denote his social position as alpha/gamma, meaning he serves as a gamma leader, although he, himself, was alpha/beta.) To avoid unnecessary alpha-gamma conflict between the two leaders there had to be ways in which the gamma-male could co-exist without threatening the alpha-male, since the alpha-male was probably loathe to share power with another leader, especially over deciding who slept with which female. For these reasons, the operational gamma in a primitive group could not be female. In fact, discrimination against females may have originated as a way to confederate the alpha-gamma relationship (an idea, for example, that may illuminate the prohibition against ordaining female priests). One way to keep peace in the tribe would be to make sure that (1) there was only one gamma-male per tribal unit; and (2) the gammamales concerns were predominantly abstract (or supernatural) compared to the alpha-males natural interests in food, sex, and physical prowess relating to hunting and combat. Thus the gammamale could have been the tribal healer, for example, staying behind with the women, perhaps chaperoned by the children (whose teacher he may have been once there were lessons to learn) while the real men were away, bringing home the bacon. Such a model, by the way, isnt so different from how our educational system works today. If these conjectures are true, they hint at how human intellect may have developed. Over the life cycle of a particular generation the alpha-male would enforce the day-to-day business of the tribal unit while the gamma-male would participate as a ratchet in the cycle, holding (remembering) abstract, symbolic data in his head to be repeated, probably in ritual fashion, by himself and his successors. One possible evolutionary mechanism may have involved children whose cognitive abilities absorbed the accumulated (that is, ratcheted) tribal lore as it grew or changed slightly with each generation, who would presumably have attracted more mates and therefore passed on more genes than those who were less adroit at the mimicry, rhythmic dancing, singing, and play that served to advance the intellectual processing abilities of the group. Thus, if the gammamale taught ritual songs and dances to children (in whom language, even today, develops more easily than in adults, providing there are adult models available) we could discern a possible origin of language, which some say developed out of ritual singing. Another possible scenario (none of them are mutually exclusive) may have had gamma-males performing eugenic duties in the mating game. In most societies, marriage has been an arranged and religious (gamma) institution. The image of undefiled virgins marrying sons of alpha-males (as in fairy tales such as Cinderella) may survive these early marriage customs. Who was responsible for the purity of the women if not the gamma-male? He married them to alphas (whom he had probably 12

circumcised at puberty) and so he may have chosen the wives (or given them away) as well, selecting women not on the basis of how attractive they would be to alphas but how smart (and dutiful) they were when he taught them tribal rituals. (Measuring how well students followed ritual directions may have constituted the first SATs!) The sons of alphas would tend to be the best and brightest anyway; and so millennia after millennia of these superior hereditary successions would tend to improve the offspring of these favored marriages, among whom would be born the future, smarter gamma-males. In the meantime, the less clever bastard babies, unsanctified by gamma ceremonies, may have been aborted or exposed and left to wolves as a form of population control. Unfortunately, theres evidence for this possibility in ancient Greek lore. If you were to construct a typical Stone Age human tribal unit (which anthropologists tell us, for maximum efficiency in exploiting resources, would have been around 30 people), the only statistical way to guarantee, with a 95% confidence level, that there would be exactly one operational gamma-male per unit, would be to limit the unit size to 32, make the average life expectancy 32 years, and make the birth of gamma-males dependent on a random genetic event in which exactly three genes were expressed in a particular way. Such an arrangement would result in one person out of eight being born a gamma. That is, in an ideal tribal unit, at any one time there would be four gammas, one of them operational, two of them female (therefore disqualified for service), and one gamma-male youth waiting in the wings. There are several contemporary conditions that resemble this kind of random genetic event and that may even be related to it. Lefthandedness may be one of them. It seems to occur in about one out of eight people (although determining an actual statistic is difficult since so many parents and cultures discourage left-handedness). There is evidence that most Stone Age tools were made for lefthanded people. Some assume this observation suggests that more than half of all Stone Age people were left-handed. Did something happen to reverse the trend? Might not a simpler explanation be that Stone Age tools were carved mostly by gamma-males who were (or tended to be) left-handed; and that these tools and weapons were used mainly by alpha- and beta-males who were mostly righthanded, and therefore more talented at throwing spears (which the gamma-males fashioned and tipped) in a socially acceptable way? Left-handedness, according to some, is caused by an imbalance of testosterone in the womb at a critical time. Whether this condition depends on the mothers genes or behavior, or whether its something that happens as a result of a randomly determined structure in the growing fetuss DNA that influences the mothers hormones, is debatable. The evidence, however, seems to favor the latter view. If the former were true, mothers who produce one left-handed child would continue to produce more left-handed children than chance would predict, which is not what happens. 13

Thus it seems probable that gamma-males are produced in a way that is similar to how left-handed people are produced; and thus there may have been (and may still be) an overrepresentation of lefthandedness among gamma-males. The same proportions seem to be true of homosexuality (although with similar difficulties in deriving statistics about this socially discouraged condition). Some believe that homosexuality is also produced though random events occurring in the mothers womb. A feminizing condition such as homosexuality marking gamma status, of course, would make it less likely that a gamma-male would threaten the self-efficacy of an alpha-male, at least as it applies to copulation with females. Historic examples of effeminate gammamales, such as the berdache, may confirm this point. Whatever happens in a mothers womb one out of eight times to produce a gamma person probably produces its variations by altering the relative size of certain areas of the brain, expanding some and contracting others to make way for the expanded ones. For example, in the brain of Albert Einstein (who may have been a vestigial gamma-male), the inferior parietal region (where mathematical thought originates) was 15% wider than normal (possibly permitting neurons that are normally separated to form unusually insightful interconnections) while the Sylvian fissure was much smaller than average. We can probably guess what the expanded tissue did for the world; but who knows how much the corresponding loss of tissue affected the man? He was thought to have had some peculiar, though benign, social deficits. New theories about the plasticity of the brain, well articulated only in the past two years, suggest that human beings intellectual growth was probably not so much due to the amount of brain tissue increasing over time, but to an ever-growing spaciousness within the skull into which thousands of new neurons could fit every single day. These new neurons, mainly replacing ones that self-destructed, and representing memories not only of emotional and physical experiences and sensations but of intellectual training experiences by gamma-males, are probably what accounted for the spectacular intellectual evolution of human beings. When human beings first emerged they probably didnt have enough brain cells to accommodate alpha, beta, and gamma modalities within the same brains lifetime. Thus specializations probably occurred so that alpha/betas thought one way (or heard directions in a fashion that Jaynes would describe as coming from the right-brain) and gammas another way. Probably the gamma-males specialized in remembering such things as the right herbs to use for healing particular ailments as well as ritual dances and singsongs (eventually incantations) with which to confront supernatural forces. It would probably have been too taxing to expect a primitive brain to be capable of what would have been comparable to universal literacy. One expert gamma would have to suffice for each tribe, and he probably suffered in exchange for his expertise by lacking cer14

tain abilities, such as social graces (or a libidinous interest in the opposite sex). The contrast between the social alpha jock and the asocial gamma geek that occurs in almost every high school class may be a vestigial example of much earlier tribal specializations. Thus, the tragedy at Columbine High School may have illustrated the explosive dangers that can arise when the number of alpha-males and gammamales exceeds one each per tribe. If there were only one gamma-male per tribal unit; and if that person were less likely to produce offspring than his counterpart alpha-male, then gamma-males couldnt have been the ones responsible for the evolutionary expansion of brain size (or efficiency) in our species, except indirectly. A better explanation might be that members of those tribes that were best served by the intellectual (ratcheting) assistance of a gamma-male were the ones that survived best. For example, you would need only one medical doctor who knows about penicillin to save an Eskimo tribe afflicted for the first time by influenza to prevent pneumonia from killing off the whole tribe. Obviously, if prehistoric Tribes A and B each produced doctors with life-saving information and techniques that Tribes C and D didnt have, the genes of Tribes A and B (which randomly produced doctors 1/8 of the time) would be passed on more readily than would those of C and D (which perhaps randomly produced doctors only 1/16 of the time), regardless of whether Drs. A and B passed on their genes to any offspring. This example may illustrate why Cro Magnon societies survived and Neandertal societies did not. It seems likely that Neandertals had plenty of alphas and betas; and they probably had gamma-males as well. However, the proportion of gammas that infused Neandertal societies may have been different from that which infused Cro Magnon societies (for example, 1/16 instead of 1/8, influenced, perhaps, by differently evolved ideally sized communities given the contemporary climate and living conditions). If one compares some of the necklaces produced by these two people (who were contemporaneous at certain points), one finds Cro Magnon examples made out of bones or teeth that were suspended from thongs threaded through holes drilled in the materials. Neandertals, on the other hand, wrapped their thongs around grooves that were inscribed in the materials. Are we to suppose that all Cro Magnon men were equally skilled in making such clever, tasteful jewelry (or creating cave paintings that exhibited more drawing skills than are available to most modern human beings)? Or did Cro Magnon societies survive because of the greater skills of only a few of their more talented members, and Neandertals perish because the proportion of super-skilled members was too low? If so, then all contemporary human beings owe their very existence to the accelerated powers of the Cro Magnon gamma-males! Another theory might be that gamma-males acted as tribal triage officers in determining which children would live and which would be eaten in a cannibalistic society afflicted, from time to time, by ex15

treme limitations on resources. If the smartest survived and the least clever had to go; and if only the tribal teacher was the best one qualified to make the choice; in 50,000 generations the size of peoples brains would certainly increase. Such a possibility sounds inhuman. However, human beings have always been capable of much worse forms of premeditated, foolish, and evil cruelty than animals. Imagine a sudden worldwide calamity that limited resources to the extent that some would have to die so that the remainder could have enough food to live. Would our species, even today, let everyone die? Or would it begin to consume the least fit? Some reports about the Siege of Leningrad suggest that cannibalism may someday appear as preventive medicine in unforeseen catastrophes. Evidence to support this grisly theory may include the contemporary practice of drinking imaginary blood to celebrate the sacrifice of a supreme alphas Son who died for the sins of all betas. This ritual may have carried a legend of our earliest days through Roman times into our own. Other evidence includes the ritual cannibalistic practices of Western Hemisphere emerging societies less than 1,000 years old, and even the fact that human beings are carnivores and other primates are not. The Old Testament hints further at the remnants of ruthless, zealous, and fearful religious entities in its tales of Adam and Eve (and the snake), as well as Jacob and Isaac and the covenant of circumcision, which established God as the indisputable alpha/gamma-male of all the Jewish tribes. Jewish men still sacrifice a piece of their alpha status as part of a covenant that spares their lives. Moreover, why are laurel wreathes and crowns that bishops place on the heads of kings shaped like restored foreskins? Could they be symbols of them? (And what did the oil with which Zadok the Priest anointed Solomon King really represent?) Other evidence may include the innate fear of supernatural retribution that human beings seem to have developed, which may illuminate the astonishing statistic that, against all scientific reasoning, more than 90% of Americans say they believe in God. What most are really admitting is that theyre afraid not to believe in Him. Finally, todays educational triage system (through testing), which allows society, again against all reason (for there are far superior ways to create a meritocracy), to determine the quality of future life for millions of people based totally on gamma values; and the terror that system causes many people, are probably vestiges from the days when tribal alpha/gammas became god-like in their powers of life and death over children. Power, as we know, dies hard. As human evolution proceeded, and as the brain expanded, extreme specialization amongst alpha/betas and gammas probably became less necessary or even possible. Ordinary betas would have evolved to become more like alpha/gammas, capable of teaching and following, speaking language and thinking abstract thoughts, and 16

knowingly organizing ideas and behavior as directed by others or as originated by themselves. In Jayness sense, people affected by cultural upheavals that shattered tribal cohesion (as happened in Columbine High School) had to learn to practice both alpha/beta and gamma skills whenever necessary. For example, the same person might need sufficient brainpower to be able to experience artistic inspiration and do scientific observations out of a single skull. According to one writer, when these separated skills began to fuse (producing a kind of Neckers Cube illusion at first), shamans turned into religious priests, and universal consciousness as we know it began. Gammas would have continued to be born in the same proportion as before, continuing the old designations of alphas and gammas down to our own day when a gamma Archbishop of Canterbury elevates a beta prince of England to the alpha status of a King. Although, in our own time, virtually any man or woman can become a fair practitioner of either one of Snows two cultures, the differences between artists and scientists are still problematic. The two cultures (one being mostly rationalizers and the other mostly visualizers) still dont really get along. Moreover, the extreme kind of religious or professional vocation that characterizes a predominantly gamma personality directs the lives of a small minority of human beings that may equal the number of alpha overachievers in our society. How often do those two minorities engage in discourse? Although modern humans can shift between an alpha/beta modality and a alpha/gamma modality, its important to note that such shifts arent necessarily instantaneous or readily controllable. Human beings simply dont have sufficient neuronal resources to think both ways simultaneously; and special skills are needed to make progressive (ratcheting) shifts between them. Unfortunately, there are almost no organized disciplines to teach these special skills. Most behavior modification systems, for example, require a gamma to teach a beta. Many are designed to make sure that a follower has to pay an establishment (to use its space and special equipment) or a leader (or guru to provide coaching and social motivation). Hot yoga (which requires specially heated rooms) and aerobic exercise classes are good examples of these entrepreneurial arrangementsas are academically awarded degrees from prestigious, and expensive institutions of higher learning. Most of us behave throughout most of our lives as betas. Although we may not realize it or want to accept the idea, the fact is that our natural form of behavior is usually to follow directions or examples given to us by a parental authority figure or internalized role model. When it comes time to take charge of our own behavior for reasons of health, for example, were hard pressed to make the change. Thus, most of us will fail when a cardiologist demands that we Stop smoking, lose weight, learn to relax, and start an exercise program! Success in personal growth (or self-improvement) usually demands a battery of gamma specialists providing encourage17

ment and feedback. Even then, lifestyle makeovers rarely succeed. The problem is that gamma specialists are only too willing to become puppetmasters who assume the parental authority usually reserved for those who are responsible for training children. Behavior modification in adults, however, works best when motivated from within, not from a parent or external puppetmaster. (Theatrical directors understand this principle, for it explains why they have such difficulties getting actors to do what they want without using trickery or techniquewhich is often a form of willing self-deception.) Acting Well is a solution (based on Stanislavski acting technique) to the dilemma created by well-meaning gamma specialists (including theatrical directors) trying to help people (or actors) help themselves (which is an oxymoron). As will be discussed in later articles, one of the hypotheses put forth in this publication assumes that free will is an illusion; while Liberty, on the other hand, is not an illusion. Gammas do best when they try to help others liberate themselves from their illusions in order to discover their own truer paths. The third gene theory suggests that the only practical approach to self-improvement is through a continual shifting between ones beta modality (the one inspired by impressions and instructions) and ones gamma modality (the one that writes down instructions, for example, to which ones beta modality can refer). Only that kind of operation can convert the unconscious beta mode into a conscious alpha mode. (Although Jaynes flatters us into thinking modern human beings are conscious all the time, actual consciousness continues to occur only in flashes in any of us, as it probably did in prehistoric times.) Since human beings cant think in both modalities at the same time, most people trying to practice some kind of mental discipline (or physical discipline that requires motivation) get stuck in one mode or the other and ultimately fail. In their alpha/beta mode they may be inspired to win an imaginary race while they jog, for example, until they realize they may never taste real victory. At that point they may lose their inspiration and drop out. Alternatively, in their gamma mode they may practice meditation until they cant help but get bored, find themselves unable to concentrate, and give up. It is not to a paid instructors advantage to reveal the truth (if the instructor knows it!) that is implicit in our genes: namely the fact that unsupervised human beings can only take control of their habitual, usually unconscious behavior while in their beta mode by shifting to a gamma mode to hold (or ratchet) any progress, then shifting back to beta and so on through as many as a dozen repetitions until consciousness elevates the beta mode to alpha-gamma status. This method is the only effective way to practice contemplative or stressreducing exercises, such as meditation, independently, lifelong. More importantly, its the only artificial way to develop what psychologists call self-efficacy, without which no one can reach the alpha mode and feel a conscious mastery over life. When an alpha/gamma supervises a beta, exactly the same alter18

nating system is used (for example in a yoga class), except that the gamma instruction is given by the instructor, and the alternating beta performance is performed by the beta. Although there is alternation, the beta never gains control of it and can therefore never attain the gurus alpha-gamma level (and therefore not threaten his professional status or put him out of work!). Although the spiritual alpha-gamma experience (for example, of saintliness) remains tantalizingly out of reach, the beta may nevertheless feel relaxed, refreshed, and good about becoming the alpha/gammas disciple (or, actually, patient undergoing the alpha/gammas healing). But such psychological reactions do not lead to self-efficacy (that is, healed status); and usually have little to do with Hindu yoga as it is supposed to be practiced, for example, in India, where alpha/gammas labor for years to create (or elevate) new healer alpha/gammas from their student (or disciple) betas. Diet plans, of which there are probably thousands, dont work unless they are under an alpha/gamma supervisor; for diets are healing mechanisms that require another person to provide the alternating alpha-gamma feedback without which no healing method (or recipe book) can work. Therefore, to control ones weight without going to a diet doctor, one must learn and practice personal growth skills that ratchet alpha-gamma alternations to produce the selfefficacy that alone can properly coordinate eating and exercise habits. Only such a system can maintain ones ideal weight. This kind of information can help anyone who wants to change lifestyles or affect personal growth, especially cardiac patients for whom changed behavior may be a life or death decision. However, on a more international and immediate level, this information may help to affect current foreign relations between the superpowers. Now is a particularly crucial time to pay close attention to whats happening in Russia, and to recognize the elements of this theory that can interpret (and possibly influence!) the important changes that are occurring. Russia was an alpha-power that suddenly became a beta-power (some have called it a Third World nation), at which point its sense of self-efficacy declined. To make matters worse, many Russians now complain that what used to be a highly spiritual society has become materialistic by surrendering to the unsavory spell of the West. If Marx was Russias gamma, and Stalin (and his successors) were its alphas, what this complaint really signifies is the fear that, if American capitalistic theory becomes Russias new gamma, America will always be a dominating alpha nation and Russia a dependent beta nation. This analysis is probably correct. What Russia needs most these days is a restored sense of selfefficacy. Another way to describe self-efficacy is to call it by its more common name: Liberty. Liberty is more than freedom (which is given, not claimed) and much more than self-esteem (which may or may not be justifiable self-pride). Liberty is consciousness of freedom, and thus it creates an 19

alpha (as opposed to a beta) modality. However, Liberty is always informed by, and subject to, a gamma sensibility (for example, the rule of law). Freedom and self-esteem are in the beta modality and are not subject to a gamma influence. Thus, freedom easily slides into license, and self-esteem into hubris. Independent alpha Liberty, on the other hand, can slide back into beta dependency (or slavery) if it isnt diligently maintained. Law and Order are two principles that alternate alpha/beta and gamma sensibility. In the United States, alpha Order consists of the police, the Army, and the Executive Branch of government; and gamma Law consists of the Legislative and Judicial Branches of the government. These surviving institutions from prehistoric alpha/beta and gamma separations of Church and State that go back to prehistory seem to augur hope for progress in the New Russia. For example, the new president, Vladimir V. Putin, has repeatedly stated that he intends his country to join the Western market while at the same time establishing new federal regulations to stabilize Russias domestic market. His program sounds like an attempt at rapprochement between alpha and gamma: Law and Order. The late Anatoly A. Sobchak, former Mayor of St. Petersburg, who was Putins mentor and law professor, compared Putins policy to a combination of Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the first case America had a clear example of an alpha-male carrying a big stick to establish Americas alpha hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. In the case of FDR it had a compassionate gamma-male caring for its poorest citizens by casting magical spells with three letter names like TVA and WPA that were meant to heal the economy. (Of course, not until World War II, which pushed FDR into becoming the Head-alpha of the Free World, did the economy really recover.) Government policies must balance alpha and gamma influences against each other to prevent an alpha state, for example, from becoming an aggressive, imperial autocracy, or a gamma government from sliding toward a fanatical theocracy or stagnant welfare state. Putins job is to steer a straight course between these hazardous alternatives, and his actions indicate that he is aware of that responsibility. George Soross arguments supporting Karl Poppers theories about an Open Society are one mans theories of how to interpret the tension between a fallible, unregulated (alpha) global capitalist system, and a gamma regulatory system that can hold in place (or ratchet) its progress so that markets can fluctuate inconsequentially while productivity increases. Such an alpha/gamma balance would have prevented Russias emerging market from going into free-fall, as it did in October of 1998. Many regulatory systems can be proposed. However, if the theory of the third gene is correct, whether or not any of them will work will depend on a progressive relationship between alpha institutions (such as a market) and gamma institutions (such as a regulatory system). As in the early hominid societies that evolved into our own, only when reciprocal alpha and gamma powers are strong and 20

singular can they correct their imperfections. As Soros puts it, For the global capitalist system to survive it needs a society thats constantly striving to correct its deficiencies: a global open society. That vision encompasses the political and economic implications of the third gene theory, which views the world in terms of bellshaped curves rather than dichotomies. For example, on the one side are environmental influences; on the other, DNA. In between are human lives. Thus, also, on the one side are international markets; on the other, regulators. In between, depending on whether or not there is a progressive balance, will be a healthy or an ailing global economy. Russia clearly needs (and hopefully has gotten) an alpha Man of Action. [Full disclosure: between 1992 and 1996, my company was a consultant to the International Committee of the City of St. Petersburg, Russia. Vladimir Putin headed that Committee.] However, a healthy and progressive, evolving human society also needs responsive gamma thinkers to analyze, support, and criticize capable and imperfect actions. Liberty is a two-way street; its not a one-way ticket. Thus Russia wont develop a strong sense of Liberty by means of instructions or blueprints from the West (for example, from evangelists or consultants), or injections of joint venture capital from Western investors, or charity from Western governments or individuals. All these forms of assistance are attached to heavy cables of commitment, often in the form of profits (including interest payments) expected mainly to accrue to those with helping, often greedy, hands. What the American Revolution established for the first time in the history of the world, the events of the past decade in Russia can establish in Eurasia as well: namely the self-efficacy of newly liberated nations, and especially their citizens, at liberty to emerge from beta status. We dont have to do much to support these efforts. America has done far more for Russia through example than it has through capital infusion. Nevertheless, we can do a great deal more than weve done. For the more we cherish Liberty in our own land, as applied to matters involving health, education, social welfare, equality, market economies, culture, the environment, and war and peace, the better the fruits of our own success will provide examples to correct the imperfections of emerging foreign institutions. Thoughtful comparisons can strengthen commitments to Liberty in other nations in this way. In the meantime, Liberty implies responsibility. Therefore, all nations must join in reciprocal efforts to support mutually selfcorrecting institutions. These ideas arent new. They go back to the moment when the first alpha-male and the first gamma-male acknowledged their mutual dependency. In that moment, Liberty and human consciousness were born. Acting Well became possible. 21

May 2001

22

(A Hypothetical Timeline)
The Stone Age began (1.9 million years ago) when Homo habilis formed small groups who used fire. One man per clan (a unique fire custodian genetically determined by a random configuration of three specific genes) may have been appointed to keep the fire burning. Around 7,500 generations after that, if there was a Homo erectus fire custodian, it would have been he who figured out how to make fire, at which time a hunting class could emerge that would leave the custodian behind to safeguard goods (and women and children) from theft and spoilage. Only he would have the intellectual means to remember where things were stored, possibly through mnemonic devices (the first stored symbols) which 100,000 generations later would evolve into written and spoken language. Around 20,000 generations after that, object-design custodians had fashioned aecheulean tools. Around 30,000 generations after that, custodians of geographical information led Homo erectus out of Africa. Around 45,000 generations after that, ceremonial custodians were painting the human and animal skins of Homo neandertalensis, arranging marriages, conducting funerals and initiation rituals, and exposing genetically challenged babies (or seeing to it they didnt thrivea form of genetic engineering). Around 11,000 generations after that, Homo sapiens were storing information in body-painted symbols, and custodians were able to communicate with one another through proto-language (a non-syntactical form of speech that was taught by a custodian master only to a post-puberty disciplesince no one under age 13 could speak). This practice created (in the custodians only) the first consciousness that was characterized by a sense of unique self. Non-custodian adults and children (who, although by this time had been named, always sensed themselves as part of the clan) could sing words, as we might sing Adeste Fideles not knowing exactly what the words mean. Around 6,000 generations after that (10,000 years ago), as a result of continuous genetic engineering, non-custodian Homo sapiens (and their secular rulers) had learned to speak and were therefore conscious and able to teach their children how to speak. Custodians no longer had unique intellectual powers, although some of the more formidable ones long gone were still assigned supernatural powers as gods. Civilizations became possible.

Brain Theory and Stanislavski

The conceptual basis of Acting Well is as much a heresy confronting todays conventional science and health industries as Stanislavskis acting System was to the conventional theatre of his 23

dayand for the same reasons. To act truly, with real feelings, from the heart, as they say, your technique must be effective regardless of whether or not other actors or directors agree with how you play the role. In other words, your technique either works for you or it doesnt. If it does, You cant argue with success! When circumnavigation of the globe finally proved that the Earth was round, the telling fact was not the implied spherical shape of the planet (for no one ever saw an actual photograph of Earth until the beginning of the Space Age). The proof was the ability to acquire salable merchandise from around the world more cheaply by water than overland. It was commercial interests that put the flat-earth theory out of business; not a change in how people visualized the earth which was as a cloudless, spherical image no more accurate than a dream. Today, theres an equivalent struggle between scientific forces promoting a theoretical basis of nature formulated according to whats always been understood, and the more courageous forces that withhold judgment until every slight deviation from the expected has been accounted for, and the premise of every argument has been proved again and again. This latter form of scientific method has produced spectacular results, whereas dependence on received truth has produced nothing new. The relationship between a heretical scientific method and the Stanislavski System is not accidental. Both systems prevail because their respective methods to discover truth (and to struggle against error) circumscribe the same limitation on the process of human thought. This limitation is the brains tendency to abbreviate and condense perceptions, recognitions, and memories from full sensory presentations into symbolic images, words, and ideas (that is, nouns). This process can dictate a kind of shorthand thats so useful that some people lose the ability to recognize the real thing when its spelled out. Since this condensing method of thinking is as ubiquitous as water is prevalent to a fish, many scientists ignore it. Actors in the modern theatre must deal with it, however, if they expect audiences to believe them. Thus, in the Stanislavski System, the action (that is, the verb, not the noun) prevails. Character descriptions are arbitrary and of minor importance. Hamlet may be tall or short. His coat may be white, black, or colored. He was a prince, but he could have been the brother of the former king instead of his son. His circumstances are relatively unimportant (although knowing what they are may be extremely helpful to an actor in cases where they suggest interesting ways of doing things). The central actions in Hamlets play (which may be, for example, to avoid choosing whether to surrender to his life circumstances or kill himself), summed up in the famous words To be or not to be, denote verbs, not nouns. If some actors choose to play more idiosyn24

cratic central actions (such as whether or not Hamlet should kill his stepfather), they wouldnt be wrong. What works works. You cant argue with success. The point is that Shakespeares words dont enumerate the actions; they imply them. Therefore, theyre sometimes ambiguous. Nevertheless, in the theatre, the actions are all-important, although they may seem to be absent from the script. That condition, and the actors need to re-ignite a verb from an ash-like noun, is the opposite of the process that governs how the brain perceives, recognizes, and remembers through constant condensation. Therefore, one of the most fascinating moments in the life of any actor is the moment it dawns on a new student of the Stanislavski System exactly what an action is. Practically since birth, the student has been hearing and using the word action as if it were the most common thing in the world. Yet the moment the reality hits of what Stanislavski meant (most often through the conscious choice of an action that propels the actor into total belief), the actors understanding of an action as the refinement of a skill (rather than a description of the impression the actor might make on an audience, for example) becomes permanent. Actors have reported this watershed experience many times (as did Aristotle, of course, in his famous definition of tragedy as the imitation of an action...). The idea is central to Acting Well. _________________________________ The word action itself is a noun that describes a skill that cannot fully be described by a noun. It is therefore a common practice for acting teachers schooled in Stanislavski technique to force their students to reduce a characters intention to an infinitive verb. Whats the characters objective? theyll ask. I want you to give it to me as an infinitive: to please, to grovel, to humiliatethat sort of thing. The teacher may think that the lesson is to teach the actor to move from the general to the specific by insisting on using the infinitive form (for example, trying to dominate instead of conjuring a more general ideaor poseof domination). What really happens, however, is that the actors brain is transferring from nouns to verbs, which is a process not unlike traveling on a motorcycle, for example, from an address listed in a telephone directory to the actual building located at the address. This transference from looking up an address to accelerating a motorcycle makes all the difference in the world to an actor. It transfers attention from an intellectual description to the activation of a skill. _________________________________ Nouns are like addresses of buildings. Verbs (or actions) are like the buildings themselves. Thus, nouns often carry baggage with them having nothing to do with the actualities to which they point. Its as if the address 8990 Kings Highway were located in a tiny trailer 25

park where none of the inhabitants had ever seen the King, much less been a king. Why do human beings tolerate a universal address system in which such absurd disparities arent even considered funny? Its because the address system we generally use reflects (because its based on) the same addressing system that prevails in the human brain. The system is as ubiquitous as is water to a fish. If you stare through water in order to see water, youll never realize that you can swim! Thus, actors are often the only professionals to figure out how to choose and exercise the right skills to play the game. The idea behind Acting Well proposes the hypothesis that perceptions are composed of a number of neuronal groups (or columns) in the cerebral cortex that fire simultaneously (in column combinations) providing a system of addresses that the brain uses to locate (or associate) the building blocks (called referents) of all perceptions, recognitions, and memories. These referents (which represent elements such as colors, horizontal stripes, aural frequencies, etc.) tend to be located in the parts of the brain where the direct signals from the sensory organs terminate. Associative columns contain the addresses that hook the referents together. The doings of the world that we observe are all verbsall actions. The addresses in our head, on the other hand, are all nouns. Even the verbs we use in language are descriptions; for language cant act. The process goes something like this: When information goes from the retina, for example, to the occipital lobe (to which the retina reports), it travels on to the working memory, which either ignores the signals or signals back to the signaling neurons, which, in turn signal back to the working memory (looping in a diminishing manner modulated by neurotransmitters like echoes in a reverberant room). This system can keep the image or sound in the working memory long enough to be identified (or dismissed). The process is not unlike the method whereby letters are sorted into post office bins according to a five-digit zip code, except that the process contains much more vertical and lateral redundancy, and many more possibilities, than a zip code (which, by the way, repeats, in a different format, redundant information contained in the address lines above it). A match is made when a signal from any part of the address refers back to an originating referent (like party guests arriving and pressing the right button in an apartment lobby when the host is waiting upstairs to hear a doorbell in the apartment to which the button is connected). The referent neurons signal back to the signaling column combination (like buzzing open the downstairs front door); and this back and forth signaling creates a kind of reverberance (which the neuroscientist Gerald Edelman calls looping), which is powered and modulated by neurotransmitters, and which causes a moment of consciousness that would, in this case, be called recog26

nition. When the reverberant buzz is routed through certain areas of the brain (like many guests filling a party), we become conscious of referent activity, which means that we become aware of the referents. In this context, the neurotransmitters behave like guests. If they dont leave quickly enough, they can keep the buzz buzzing longer than desirable, even when no further guests are arriving at the building to ring up from downstairs. Only a reverberant, looping buzz can initiate consciousness. Thus, consciousness cannot happen independently within the eye, for example (which is as unconscious as the eye of a corpse), or at the retina, or within the occipital lobe, or even in the column combinations. Its a process, not an eventa concatenation of skills, if you like. Consciousness is thus a verb, not a noun. For this reason, an action inspired by the Stanislavski System can spring to life at the mere sound or thought of a verbal infinitive, while it will tend to remain stillborn when restricted to the mental image stimulated by a noun or adjective. _________________________________ What happens if an entirely new image falls on the retina that an individual has never seen before? The same matching process would prevail, except that (in some cases) the address determined in the working memory might lead to a column combination that hasnt yet been connected or assigned. The process would be like discovering a recently constructed building in which no one ever lived. The same reverberant buzz would occur; but the effect (or emotion) felt in consciousness of a suddenly activated connection would not be one of recognition. It would carry with it the feeling of a new perception. As column combinations are constantly being assigned, each one bears an address thats different from the one before. The referents, however (analogous to references to the address numbers, the street, the neighborhood, etc.) are never virginal; they always preexist. It follows, then, that all our memories are prefabricated before our experiences occur. A memory is hooked up to the appropriate address of a specific column combination, providing there are sufficient columns available to house it. If there arent, then we cant remember the memory. (Therefore, we often need to repeat certain incoming information several times before we can remember ituntil, that is, we can assign its proper address.) In a similar manner, in most American cities, a post office can usually determine what the address of a new building will be long before the building goes into construction. Occasionally, of coursefor example, in Tokyoit cannot. Some people may be uncomfortable with the implications of this hypothesis. How can memories be formed before the experiences occur to form them? The idea seems preposterousin any case, a heresy against the prevailing theories of how we think. Yet, to someone 27

used to the concept, the opposite ideathat memories are entirely new, made our of intellectual entities (as opposed to being made out of sensual referents)seems like arguing that we all live on a flat Earth that is circled daily by the stars. How can you explain imagination without pre-existing referents? Where would you get the memories that compose imagination otherwise? Could they form themselves? If so, how could you discern whats real and whats fantasy? This hypothesis helps explain such phenomena as hypnosis, rationalizations, and false memory syndrome. How can someone be so convinced that something happened that never actually happened, even though drugs, brainwashing, or other means of stressful intimidation caused a person to remember an event, in great detail, that clearly never happened? The answer is that if all memories pre-exist, then its obvious that many influences other than actual experiences can activate them and make someone believe them with all their heart. Thus, you have an explanation for the true believers for whom faith in supernatural events (like alien abductions, miracles, divine visitations, outer body, or near-death experiences) is resolute and unshakable. You also have the complete and exonerating defense of the Passion of Michael Jackson, whose boy accuser insistently denied that anything had happened until his father had a dentistcolleague inject him with a hypnotic drug, after which time the boy recanted. The column combination hypothesis is also compatible with the effects of the Stanislavski System, which prevailing theories are not. It explains why the Stanislavski System always works as an acting technique (regardless of whether a particular performance is any goodwhich is an entirely different question), as opposed to the more mannered techniques (for example, of the Comdie-Franaise) that only sometimes come to life in an inspired manner. It also explains why Acting Well always works, and why other systems (such as typical diet programs), dependent on prevailing brain theory, work long-term only some of the time, usually less than a placebo effect would predict. _________________________________ If a squirrel were perched at the side of a curving road, frozen in place, trying to decide whether to move toward or away from my speeding bicycle as I approach it; when I see the squirrel, heres what probably happens in my particular brain, according to the hypothesis: My working memory matches sensory input from my retina to my frontal cortex, looking, first of all (I think) for things that go too fast to catch and eat (which might be the first number of the zip code). Finding that designation, the next two matches might be to (2) things from which I dont have to run, because (3) theyre too small to fear. The next match might be Things Id enjoy fondling, and so forth. Note, first, that my address for a posing squirrel (which 28

would be quite different from my address for a running squirrel which isnt as cute) is entirely idiosyncratic. Its unlikely that another human brain would categorize a posing squirrel the way I do (although its certainly possible). Secondly, note that my address designations are verbs (which denote skills) not nouns (which are abbreviations or symbols of experiences that involve skills). I dont (and no one else does either!) categorize squirrels according to shape, color, size, or any of the usual suspects on which most neuroscientists depend. I use designations that tell me things like (1) is there any danger to avoid? (2) Can I eat it? and (3) Can I make love to it? The answers appear, either positively or negatively, within milliseconds, and in terms of verbs that represent positive or negative skills (I cant catch it) not nouns (Its brown). In the primitive jungle, theres no time or reason to notice descriptions of animals! The whole abbreviation matching process (and consciousness, which depends on it) is present in mammals (it isnt needed in plants) because mammals move around so much that they can constantly get into trouble. Therefore, they need a system to alert them first to danger, and then to food, sex, etc. The brain provides that excellent alarm system. Therefore, the column combination hypothesis doesnt permit free willpower. Youll always do what youve always done in a comparable situationand youd better do it fast if you want to survive! If you have to make a novel choice in unfamiliar territory, youll break down the possible actions into their most familiar parts and act according to the sum of those parts. The seminal work of Benjamin Libet, which demonstrates these conjectures (and which is still hotly debated by some less enlightened proponents of prevailing theories of the brain), provided a clear rejection of an entire races belief that human beings could have free will (and therefore willpower) despite the obvious implication that if human beings had to cogitate before every action, our race would have gone extinct eons ago. In a sense, Libet delivered the first proof that flat-earth psychology is incorrect. He showed that our actions precede our intentions; and that, therefore, our assumptions that we will ourselves to do things before we do them is never more than a rationalization. Libets Paradox explains exactly why, when an actor wills an action rather than sets up the action, the result will be that the actor gets criticized for indicating, or going for results. The Stanislavski System, then, and Acting Well, which is based on it, closely approximate the manner in which the brain interprets input from sensory organs. The actor matches the playwrights words against primitive needs to know whether a character needs to exercise the proper skills to escape danger, eat, make love, and so on. These questions reduce to idiosyncratic, doable or non-doable verb infinitives and skills, rather than passively descriptive, standard nouns and adjectives. Actors are less interested, therefore, in abbreviated concepts like mind, spirit, soul, real self, and so forth, which 29

are highly refined symbols that have lostif they ever possessed the actual childhood perceptions on which they were originally based. They have become mere zip codes (like 10021 or 90210) instead of the great monuments to glamour and parklands where moguls ruled and children played that these postal designations were programmed to represent. Therefore, such words have as little value to an actor (regardless of their value to a believer) as they have to a scientist. _________________________________ The hypothesis disregards the importance of neurotransmitters, which some prevailing neuroscientists consider essential to such phenomena as emotions, for example. Neurotransmitters are probably only by-products of neural transmissions, which seem to reverberate, because of the neurotransmitters, in a diminishing manner (like the sounds of a majestic organ in an acoustically reverberant cathedral). Thus, it isnt dopamine that causes addiction, which seems to be the prevailing idea. Heroin is the culprit that makes us aware of euphoria. Dopamine only smoothes out the euphoric sensations (which isnt a small thing; you can certainly play around with neurotransmitters in powerful wayssome good, some extremely ill advised). Secondly, the hypothesis cuts through the whole problem of consciousness like a hot knife through butter. Some scientists consider consciousness one of the most difficult problems in science. However, theres consciousness and theres consciousness. As things happen to you, your sensory organs send signals to neurons throughout your brain. You can be aware of this processing at any time; but usually the information just flows (or doesnt flow) through your working memory a single time, in which case you neither notice nor remember it. This primitive form of consciousness is probably available to any ambulatory creature. What makes humans special is the elaborateness of the system to match incoming information with pre-existing column combinations that can re-evoke the incoming information (as if an event were occurring repeatedly). This recurring buzz is what separates humans from birds, for example. Its sometimes called higher consciousness. Among other things, it causes us to feel things, such as emotions. These emotions are matched to certain areas of the brain that, when stimulated, cause us to feel one specific emotion (or qualia) rather than another. Higher consciousness is one of these emotions. Among other things, its a feeling of owning a thought (or self-hood). Whatever else we may believe it to be, consciousness is nothing more than an emotion. Finally, the buzz of consciousness occurs at various frequencies, which are thought to carry information in themselves. Probably the only important thing about frequency is the value of its repetition. You cant have qualia without frequency. Once you have frequency, however, you can definitely feel and thinkregardless of how fast or slow the buzz buzzes. 30

_________________________________ Enter most parents, teachers, play directors, nutritionists, physical therapists, personal trainers, authors, gurus, doctors, experts, consultants, advisors, authorities, clergy, and self-helpers, all of whom claim to know the way, and all of whom are only too eager to share their secrets, providing you submit to their systems and theories, and (usually) pay them. They cant all be right, of course; for each one tends to contradict or supplant the previous one. Thus, the abstinent yogi condemns the self-made millionaires book on how to achieve great wealth and happiness; or the high-protein expert decries the all-carbohydrate guru; or the 5-minutes-per-month-1,000-pound-weight-lifting-expert makes the daily aerobics advocate sound like a time-waster. Finally, if you bought and ate only a single sample of all the cures and nostrums in the average health food store, your stomach would rupture in less than a day. Stanislavski was not that kind of trainer. His goal was to liberate, not enslave his students to a System. (Youll find a similar disparity between the Method Acting of Lee Strasberg, and the more useful, though less brilliant, training theories of Stella Adler, who was the only American acting teacher to study with Stanislavski.) Acting Well seeks no less to liberate, although its method can be reduced to a few simple rules that must be followed. However, the rules of Acting Well conform to the column combination hypothesis of how the brain works, not to the prevailing theory that the brain is a tabula rasa to be programmed by rehearsing positive life experiences or absorbing the accounts of brilliant teachers. Thus, in Acting Well, instructions are presented in terms of verbs and skills, not nouns and perceptions, just as Stanislavskis actors are warned not to go for results (or indicate). What actors do, theyre supposed to do while thinking as little as possible. (Thus fine actors are rarely aware of how well theyre doing while doing it.) Actors dont present themselves as perfect impersonators, but submit to the character roles they portray. Furthermore, they dont aim to serve an author, director, play, audience, god, or even an abstract character. They try to serve exactly what the character they portray would serve. That is, they try to serve themselves if their character is self-serving, or they try to serve God if their character is Joan of Arc. They dont let themselves become puppets in the hands of a puppetmaster who would animate them as if they were dead meat at the end of a network of strings. Outside direction is unreliable, and compliance to it is low; for the actor who submits to it must serve two masters: (1) the director, and (2) the self whom the director would direct. Self-motivation, on the other hand, when efficiently and honestly generated, is always compliant. It doesnt have to serve a master, and is therefore the easiest and only way outwhich is an important reason why the Stanislavski Systemand Acting Wellalways works. 31

There are puppetmasters everywhere. Some of them, like overzealous parents, combine good and loving intentions with poor judgment, experience, and methods. Other puppetmasters are purely evil. They would take everything from you as part of an ultimate plan to take over the world. All puppetmasters are dangerous, for they would neutralize your humanity and make you an instrument or condensation of their theory, usually demanding an exchange of power or money. You are the only human being who can motivate your performance. As long as you concentrate on your actions, improve your skills, know what youre doing, understand why youre doing it, and take responsibility for what will happen as a result of your actions, youll maintain a solid control of your destiny. If you fail to concentrate; if you fail to wake up from your constant naturally occurring reveries and dreams, even for a single day, youll either remain enslaved to bad habits, or become a puppet to someone elses benign or evil machinations. Therefore, if youre overweight, you must come to understand, over the next few weeks, months, and years, that the reason youre overweight is that youve become a victim of the incorrect theories of flat-earth psychology. False memories have been activated in your brain at various times and for various reasons, some of them wellintentioned (as when parents urge their children to eat everything on your plate!), and some of them products of unmitigated and unforgivable evil (as is the selling of over-sugared commercial products through advertising media to which children should never be exposed). During the course of Acting Well, you must begin to activate new column combinations that will (eventually) take the place of the harmful ones now in place. If you believe, for example, that variety is important in creating diet and exercise regimens, you must replace that concept, for it is harmful. If you believe that quick weight loss (for example, 2 pounds per week) is superior to slow weight loss (for example, 2 pounds per month), you must replace that concept, for it is harmful. If you believe that most days of the week can compose a feasible schedule for exercise, then you must replace that concept, for it is harmful. If you believe that counting calories or fat grams, choosing a goal weight, or practicing fitness yoga and watching workout videos are good for you, you must reduce your respect for those activities, for they can be harmful. Acting Well is a system to replace unhealthy column combinationswhich, over time, can be lethalwith healthy column combinations that may extend your life and improve its quality, especially as you get older. Thus, Acting Well isnt about diet, exercise, or stress reduction. Its about a process, usually called retraining, that begins in earnest after youve lost the weight you need to lose, not before or during. Its after youve proven that Acting Well works for you that youll realize how extensively it works, through many different areas of your life, whether those areas are physical, emotional, medical, or involve your 32

relationships at work or with people you love. Remember that a puppet is a dead issue. It wears a motley costume and purports to be a male or female human being. Nevertheless, its wooden. Its entire reality can be fully describable scientifically, exclusively from nouns and adjectives. Therefore, beware of scientists! They may beguile; but they also kill; and they can cost a lot of money! You, on the other hand, are a bundle of verbs, adverbs, and skills; using real and symbolic tools; and faced with obstacles in your quest to realize your ultimate goals: which are to stay alive, eat well, love well, work well, have fun, and, if possible, develop products with your brain that may benefit the world to come. Act well!

Static and Dynamic Theories of the Brain

For a long time, neuroscientists speculating about the workings of the brain assumed that human beings started their adult life with all the brain cells they would ever have. Although they knew that other cells throughout the body, from blood to bones to skin (even to the heart, it now appears) constantly renewed themselves, scientists continued to accept the prevailing theory that human brain cells were permanent from birth. It was partly because of the devastating, irreparable damage done to the brain by strokes and injuries that scientists assumed that the brains structure was as immutable as Humpty-Dumpty. Once neurons died or got disconnected it seemed as if they could never be replaced or reassembled. What was worse was that some neuroscientists were telling people that once the brain is formed, some its cells die off daily (which is true), leading to an inevitable and irreversible mental deterioration that comes to everyone with age. Of course, you began your adult life with billions of brain cells. Even if you lost 50,000 neurons a day, it would take you six thousand years to lose every cell. Nevertheless, losing even a small percentage of your brain matter every day will undoubtedly add upunless the cells can be replaced. Some doctors therefore used to explain the mental deterioration that afflicts many (but not all!) elderly people by citing the constant loss of brain cells as people grow older. This theory of a static brain was officially confirmed first in 1958 (and eagerly promoted for the next 40 years) by Dr. Pasko Rakic of Yale University, a neuroscientist investigating whether new brain cells formed in embryonic monkey brains. He saw no evidence for neurogenesis in monkeys (or, by extension, in humans) despite the fact that another scientist, Jesse Conel, had published eight volumes of research based on more than fourmillion measurements (made between 1939 and 1967) of the brains of children who had died between birth and six years of age. Conels data suggested that neurogenesis regularly occurred in these chil33

drens brains. When Dr. Conel died, several of his cardboard boxes (which contained the largest database ever collected on the developing human cerebral cortex) were salvaged by William Rodman Shankle (then of Boston University and now a neurologist at the University of California at Irvine). Dr. Shankle, by that time, had the advantage of being able to use computers to measure the exact numbers of cells in Conels data in order to establish that, in human adults, the location of higher brain functions stem from arrays of approximately onemillion vertical columns of approximately 100,000 neurons each in the cerebral cortex. Dr. Shankle and his colleagues further established that the number of neurons in each square millimeter of tissue rises by a third from birth to three months as new columns are added. The number of neurons then plummets back to birth level between three and 15 months. At that point, the number increases rapidly, doubling by the age of 72 months. It probably continues to increase, although more slowly, up to the age of 18 or 21which coincides, of course, with the maturing of a teenagers personality. Finally, the brain continues to add new neurons, probably until death. No one knows exactly how many cells are added daily, but Dr. Shankles opinion is that the number of cells added per day equals the number that of cells that die each day. In that case, the net effect would be zero. Unfortunately, the facts established by Dr. Shankle and his colleagues conflicted with the theories of Dr. Rakicwho, perhaps because he was older, or from a more distinguished academic institution, was more powerful in the field. Rakic was therefore able to block, for many years, the publication of any scientific papers that contradicted his theories. However, in 1998, another scientist, Dr. Elizabeth Gould, managed to publish her findings that new brain cells formed continuously in the hippocampus of Macaque monkeys. Rakic immediately attacked her experiments as irrelevant as far as higher brain functions were concerned. Even reptiles have a hippocampus, he argued. However, he predicted that no neurogenesis would be discovered in the cerebral cortex of a monkeys brain. A year later, Gould proved him wrong again, this time conclusively. She and her colleagues had already proved that new cells form constantly in the center of the brain that migrate to the hippocampus. This time she proved that new neurons also migrate to the cerebral cortex and other areas of the brain that involve thinking and emotions. How could Rakic be so sure of himself, and so wrong, that he managed to hold back the science of the brain for decades? Gould suggested several methodological explanations for his errors: her injected cell dyes (which revealed neurogenesis) penetrated much further into tissue sections than Rakics; she sacrificed her animals much closer to the time they were injected (Rakic waited from 3 34

months to 6 years before he sacrificed 3/4 of the dozen animals he injected); and Gould didnt use pregnant animals. All of the animals Rakic used were pregnant females that may have been producing hormones that inhibited neurogenesis. Perhaps it didnt matter to Rakic whether or not the adult human brain could regenerate. It shouldnt matter one way or the other for any scientist that wants you to be a free individual, capable of making choices that are in your best self-interest. However, for anyone or any group that wants you to obey their orders, take their medicine, vote for their candidate, worship their gods, agree with their theories, follow their moral order, or buy their goods and services, it matters enormously. For scientists like Dr. Rakic, the model of a static brain that never regenerates is the safest theory to champion; any other theory might challenge his position as a role model (or parental figure) in his field. That is, Rakic apparently wants to be what many doctors, scientists, and some parents struggle or connive to become: namely, a puppetmaster. His science demonstrates a propensity to regard human beings as objects to be manipulatednot necessarily by him, but by anyone who (because of academic degrees, power, success, or other honors) goes into battle in order to best explicate (which is to say, provide correct information about) human nature. This tendency may be one of the complex adaptive systems inborn in human beings that (at least according to Dr. Shankle) may involve a few of an adults million neuronal columns, some of which are preprogrammed in such a way as to get parents to treat young children like puppets so that they will behave by the time they reach adulthood and have children of their own. If your brain was a static tabula rasa (or empty slate) at the time you were born; and if your personality (or your mind) formed gradually but permanently out of connections influenced by your parents, teachers, and peers; then who could object to anyone trying to influence you to make this or that choice once youve become an adultby which time all your character choices are formed and unchangeable, except for those changes that might be brokered by new information? Youre a big boy or girl now, and therefore you can presumably take every piece of advice, from whatever source, with your own grain of salt. Under this theory, new information is a valuable resource that expands your Constitutionally guaranteed repertoire of choices. (Isnt that the familiar argument of cigarette and firearms manufacturers?) Unfortunately, having a free and independent mind is only possible if the brain that the mind inhabits is static. Dynamic brain theory presents a different pictureone in which theres no such thing as a mind; only the actions perpetrated by an unconscious brain that may be infrequently observed about 10 milliseconds after the actions it promulgates occur by a weak and constantly rumblingtumbling consciousness. 35

This theory (called the Birdsong Hypothesis in a later article) proposes that human beings are born without willpower. To overcome this considerable handicap, parents guide children in order to promote good habits; and puppetmasters provide further information and directions for later development once they believe willpower has been firmly established. Konstantin Stanislavski, on the other hand, worked with actors, who (being human) knew they lacked the ability throughout their lives to will their characters (as well as themselves) to behave according to a playwrights instructions. Providing a better substitute for puppetmaster direction, Stanislavski called the products of his system techniques. Acting Well is based on some of those techniques. What if your personality and the choices you make arent established permanently by the time you reach adulthood? What if they never stop developing until you die? What if the influences that try to get you to do things dont just reform connections between symbols and ideas somehow represented in your head, but activate actual brain tissue in order to create new bits of a new you by means of such heroic efforts as the attention-grabbing special effects and constant repetition of television advertising? In that case, the authors of any billboard or magazine advertisement you see would actually own a piece of real estate in your brain! What if Adolph Hitlers speeches could have made you (yes you!) into a good Nazi?not just by rearranging symbols and ideas youve had since childhood, but by forming entirely new parts of an entirely new personality that was capable of looking the other way while millions of human beings were labeled subhuman and slaughtered? The world would have to go to war to confront such a society! Indeed, World War II wasnt fought against Adolph Hitler; it was a war against the German people, a majority of whom legitimatized the reasonable-sounding policies of an Aryan nation in which everyones ego was to be submerged into the greater good of the State. How was it possible that a majority of entire populations of several European countries could countenance barbaric ideas and behavior, much less willingly participate? If the individuals within those populations came of age before the Nazis took power, why didnt their moral, religious, and educational upbringings inoculate them against National Socialisms unscrupulous manipulations? The answer is that, if the brain itself can be altered under the right circumstances, then the Nazis didnt have to manipulate whatever existed in peoples psyches; they could actually create new psyches: person by person, bit by bit, neuron by neuron. Allied propaganda (for example, in popular American films of the period) showed the brutal faces of Nazism: the interrogations, the shootings, and the ruthless exercise of power. However, the Nazis propaganda showed the bright faces of young athletes, the pomp and circumstance of state, and the soldiers and sportsmens bravery. Most of the people who saw these images loved them. 36

Given the Nazis totalitarian control of the media and other social forces, the majority of their populations could not resist their cunning. In other words, it wasnt soldiers pointing guns that forced the people to acquiesce to barbaric behavior. Persuasion literally altered peoples brains. You can only explain the horrors of the Nazi era if you accept the idea that human brains and what they do are created not just once, at birth, but continuously, throughout life; and that its possible for good or evil influences to create saints or demons on a huge scale given the clever use of marketing tools such as propaganda, speechmaking, advertising, and publicity. This idea is a huge indictment against the common notions that every human being has an eternal mind or soul that remains unique, good, and constant throughout its life; that our souls are created and protected by God; and that they persist after death. The resistance against overthrowing these common notions is certainly part of the resistance against a dynamic theory of the brain, the ramifications of which cut through every aspect of life as we know it. If a dynamic theory of the brain is correct, then we the People should be continuously enraged by religious, political, scientific, educational, and commercial forces that would recreate parts of us to their benefitusually financially. The fact that fierce competition is encouraged in democratic countries saves America from the most harmful forms of totalitarianism. Nevertheless, all of us are subject, daily, to malignant and benign forms of manipulation that, willy-nilly, form our character and make up our minds. These manipulations affect the wisest and most intelligent members of our population, not just the most naive and gullible. That is, they affect us all, not just statistical populations representing the most ignorant, unwashed portions of the public. When Goulds paper was published establishing the likelihood of adult human neurogenesis, some scientists called her findings paradigm shifting. It appears, however, that the paradigm, if it has shifted at all, has been shifting slowly, probably because of the persistent nature of static brain theory, which originated before the dawn of history, and which is likely to die hard. For example, back in the days of Aristotle, philosophers were explaining consciousness as a kind of witnessing of shadows on the walls of caves. That idea, which obviously conjures up the need for a witness to watch the moving shadows, has persisted down to our day, when some scientists still insist that the brain is something like a television screen, projecting sensory and other data to a real self (or mind) that witnesses it. The idea that theres a homunculus (a little man) inside our brain that watches the screen was discredited long ago. Nevertheless, a static brain theory will tend to support the idea that permanent brain neurons act like the pixels of a television screen, turning on or off according to information sent to them from other places. This model of the brain makes it difficult to explain conscious37

ness. If there were such a thing as a homunculus (such as a mind, a soul, a spirit, an ego, a real self, or an immortal entity) it would be that entity that is ultimately conscious. However, if theres no homunculus, whats conscious in us? A television screen itself is obviously not conscious; for the pixels, which are formed at birth, are constantly reused. None of them care what comes on or goes off. In a dynamic theory of the brain, rather than regarding the brain as a television screen, the brain would be thought of as being more like a camera. The eyes (for example) would be lenses that send information to the neurons. However, the neurons would not be thought of as a screen. They would be regarded as being more like a roll of film, sections of which are exposed, developed, saved (in something like a photo album) in order, occasionally, to be reviewed. Its possible that some sections of film that arent exposed may be discarded in order to be replaced (through neurogenesis) with new film stock that (because of a Darwinian process) may be more likely to be useful and therefore survive. In a static brain theory, the screen belongs to the viewer. Whatever is on it flits by from time to time, always different, belonging to no one. Obviously, your television set belongs to you; but the screen is dark until you turn it on. Who, then, owns those flickering images on your television screen? You may say you own them as long as you watch them (or bring them back through a memory process, in the manner that a VCR recalls a program); but the images are so ephemeral that your sense of ownership seems irrelevant. One advantage of a dynamic brain theory is that no homunculus is required to view your photo album. Every memory may be referenced (pointed to) from other parts of your brain (other pointers) as needed. A television screen is truly a model of a static brain: It shows whatever comes down the pikenothing edited, nothing left out. You may not remember much of what you see; but supposedly, youll recall what you need to know in the future. The images are universal, because theyre available to everyone. Nobody owns them: Not you and not the people who made them. In a dynamic brain theory, the question of ownership takes on greater significance. In this case, the images are more like individual negatives from which multiple prints (or memories of the same incident reviewed repeatedly at different stages of your life) can reproduce what your camera (your eyes) originally saw. Theres no screen to show a succession of images. There are only prints (memories) available from the original negatives. Those prints arent seen at the moment the negative captures the images, for it takes about 10 milliseconds of repetitious circuitry to turn the negative into a positive print. Only then can your consciousness become aware of what you saw. The prints are obviously yours, available only to you. However, 38

who owns the negatives that represent the images that became available to anyone interested? You might say its obvious that you own them as well. After all, they came to life somewhere in your head, not in anyone elses. However, if youre a photographer taking pictures of a famous person, the question of ownership gets more complicated, even if you own the camera. For example, what if youre a movie star, and your producers want pictures of you to display on theatre billboards? Who owns the negative? You, as the movie star? The producers who pay the photographer? Or the photographer? The answer in real life can only be determined case-by-case. Nowadays, photographic images of Marilyn Monroe cant be exploited for advertising purposes without paying some kind of homage (or royalty) to the estate of Marilyn Monroe, which inures to the benefit of Lee Strasbergs second wifes family. How, then, can you answer the question: Who owns the nations memories of Marilyn Monroe? Anna Strasberg? The issue is more critical when considering who owns the images in your brain. You, after all, didnt cause them; your eyes and ears were passive viewers of all those images, and your brain converted some of them to permanent memories. If advertisers created some of those images (as part of a television program, for example), those advertisers are perfectly willing to let you see them (and retain their memories) without paying anyone because they know the power of television will result in a portion of the audience buying the products or services they advertise. Its a slamdunk decision to let you have the images for nothing. But its always clear who invented those images and who ultimately owns themin perpetuity, regardless of the number of brains in which those images might happen, temporarily, to reside. For example, what about McDonalds twin arches? Who owns those red and yellow icons? Obviously the image of the arches imprinted in your brain is yours; but the image itself is not yours! If you extricate the image from your brain and try to use it commercially, for example, McDonalds will sue! Obviously, then, you dont own the image. Its been legally trademarked and commercially assigned to McDonalds; and McDonalds haswith or without your permissiontaken over a piece of real estate in your brain that points to the memory of the McDonalds archesand what they signify. You can change nothing important about the image as you store it in your memory. McDonalds doesnt only insist that you not change it, but if you try, youll find youre unable to change it. For example, can you imagine the image in purple and green still signifying McDonalds? Even for a moment? Hardly! McDonalds doesnt rent space in your brain, it gets free use of it under the theory that if it resides in enough brains it will be well 39

worth it to give away the image to you and all the others who have seen and memorized it. As far as McDonalds is concerned, your brain is nothing but a free television screen for them to use for advertising purposes. In this way, McDonalds operates according to the static brain theory in which it doesnt matter on whose brain they try to impress their image. More significantly, if the dynamic brain theory is correct, and if you succumb to the McDonalds Companys wiles and buy Big Macs frequently, you will actually be paying the company real money for storing their memories in your head! Thats adding insult to injury, for those images point you where to go and what to look for when youre in the mood for a quick, artery-clogging Big Mac cheeseburger. In a sense, if you constantly succumb to their marketing, you may be paying the company to shorten your life! According to the dynamic brain theory, your belief in the integrity of your character is a sad illusion. You have no more control over your belief system than a cat has; and you may even have less. You function according to habit and expectations; and both your body and brain are extremely vulnerable to the power of suggestion, over which you may have no control at all. This mental weakness (which causes considerable grief due to lack of willpower, for example, for people on diets) doesnt only affect people who are ignorant or easily hypnotized. If youre human, youre suggestible. Only a fool would behave all the time like a scientist, testing every theory before acting. Theres no time to do it, and nobody doesunless theyre scientists doing science. (Therefore, Acting Well, which is specifically designed to confront your tendency to allow yourself to be manipulated, mimics, during its Morning Preparation, the scientific process of observing, reporting, observing, reporting, etc. Science is still the best system to observe the world objectively.) With the added responsibility that comes from acknowledging your dynamic brain comes an increased opportunityto change. In fact, its difficult to imagine how you can change to healthier habits if you believe in a static brain. If your brain were static, it wouldnt matter so much what goes in your brain and what you keep out because, theoretically, your character was formed when you were a child. Now you must absolutely know who you are and what you believe. However, if you accept a dynamic brain theory, you can no longer assume that you make your brains best security guard, letting in what should go in and keeping out what you should keep out. In fact, you have no power to know the difference! To truly protect yourself, therefore, you would have to remove yourself entirely from the world and let nothing in except what you, yourself, create. Many instructors of meditation actually use this model of shutting out the world and concentrating on the Self. Fortunately, their method (which depends on static brain theory) is never practiced for 40

more than 20 minutes at a time. If you could be fully successful in blocking out the rest of the world for long periods, you would eventually go mad from a condition called sensory deprivation. You can see the results of such deprivation in any nursing home for the agedas I saw it in my mother, who, at age 96, was mostly blind and deaf; and who therefore developed a singular talent for hearing hostile voices (coming from a television set) that no one else could hear. In a democratic society that allows religious, political, and commercial competition, you have a good chance of making good choices. America may be a confusing country in which to live, and everyone makes mistakes. However, we all have greater opportunities for discovering the best things available (and therefore enjoying a richer life) than wed have in totalitarian societies ruled by wealthy plutocrats, ruthless potentates, and/or fanatical clerics. Living in a democracy, you may use dynamic brain theory to thwart, from now on, anyone who tries to implant their brand images (or proprietary nutritional, physical training, or stress reduction ideas for that matter) into sections of your brain. Thus, dynamic brain theory can be a powerful defense of your liberty, which is perpetually under attack from forces that have always relied on static brain theory to absolve them of the dirty tricks and ignorant mischief they continually wreak on increasingly large sections of the worlds population. Chances are this article isnt the first one youve read on the subject of how to change your life. It is, however, likely to be the first one youve read that wasnt written by one of the arrogant Rakics of the world, who specialize in puppetmastery. Unfortunately, puppetmastery is a theme that runs rampant throughout the world. Despite my abhorrence of its grosser affronts, I hope this themes constant reappearance in this book will ultimately serve more to strengthen the humble persistence of the Goulds and Shankles of the world (whom you should emulate!) than to attack the power of the Rakics, which is a contest that doesnt interest me. To that end, Dr. Shankle, by generously pointing out the weaknesses of my farther-out arguments, has caused me to rethink my cleverest hypotheses (because I couldnt prove them) and excise my most attractive ideas (which turned out to be wrong when exposed to someone better informed than I shall ever be). Therefore, this book will often lack clear directions. Youll have to make up your own menus, for example, and design your own exercise plans. Any less responsibility on your part will waste your time. However, in tribute to my humiliating capitulations, Dr. Shankle complimented me by saying, I wish more scientists were like you. Rakic is certainly not one of them.

Exercise
Exercise is properly prescribed for therapeutic purposes, not as 41

an adjunct for wellness. Of course, the word exercise is often used to refer to any kind of vigorous activity, from strolling around the garden to climbing Mount Everest. Such activities may have some therapeutic value for some people some of the time. However, would you seriously consider a baseball pitcher to be exercising his arm as he throws the ball in the deciding pitch of the final inning of the final game of the World Series? Of course not! That pitcher is involved in a serious sports competition, the results of which will resound around the world. The effect his final pitch may have on his cardiovascular health wont begin to counteract the negative effect of the stress he undergoes. Its silly even to consider it. If you break your arm, after the cast is removed, a physical therapist may advise you to lift weights for six weeks, gradually increasing the number of pounds until by the sixth week you have your strength back. At that point, you may say youve been exercising your bad arm. The activity was a temporary therapeutic assignment, not a permanent lifestyle change. It involved a small number of muscles, not the whole body. There was a specific objective involved; it wasnt done for general health purposes. Such exercise probably involved a measurable improvement. Because it was temporary, you were better at it at the end of the period than at the beginning. Exercise wasnt invented as a therapy to treat people whose lifestyles are sedentary. (It was probably a military invention.) When people adopt exercise as a way to avoid a sedentary lifestyle, they may quickly become bored. They may see no end to, or relief from, the routines they practice every day except old age, infirmity, and death. They dont feel like doing it all the time. They begin to feel guilty for lacking the willpower to do it one more time. Finally, they stop. Eventually, they die. Replacing, augmenting, or changing your activities isnt the correct solution to the problem of leading a mostly sedentary life. In other words, you dont have to change anything! What you need to do is to balance your lifestyle. In other words, you may continue to sit down on the job most of the time as long as you practice a daily strenuous activity that gets you out of the chair, out of a building, and out of a sedentary lifestyle long enough to provide what will amount to a healthy balance between your stationary physical life and an out-of-doors physical activity. The question is, how much time do you need to achieve a healthy balance? Since your life doesnt fit on a scale where you can balance four hours of physical activity against four hours of sitting in a chair, what you must determine is how to balance something like four pounds of feathers against four pounds of gold. Obviously, you need a relatively small volume of gold on the scale to balance a huge heap of feathers! In the same way, if you choose the right form of physical activity, 30 minutes of activity may balance as many as 1,400 minutes of sitting down. 42

However, this method of balancing will apply to you only under certain conditions: You must practice every day. Not three days a week, not every other day, not when you feel like it, not when you think about it, not on weekends only or on weekdays only, not for a six-week trial period, but every dayexcept when youre forced to make an exception due to weather, illness, professional demands, or emergencies which exceptions will translate to an average minimum frequency of physical activity of six days out of seven throughout the year. If you dont hold to this schedule from now on until youre no longer ambulatory (meaning, just before you die!), you wont be able to balance your sedentary lifestyle! Forget what anyone else says about occasional exercise. The law is the law! Every dayfrom now onforever! Concentrate on a single sport or recreation. Dont consider choosing from a variety of possibilities depending on whim or season, or else one day youll stop doing all of them! Its difficult to establish a physical activity routine if you seek variety in what you do. If you generally ride a bicycle but have gotten used to doing a half hours worth of aerobic dancing in your own living room when the weathers bad, thats fine, of course. You will still have developed a routine that you can predict if you know the circumstances. The main thing is: Get over the American disease of varietyism! Avoid working out while sitting in a chair. Some people will (rightfully) disagree and say that the only practical way they can work out every day is to ride a stationary bicycle. This kind of exercise (and it truly is exercise!) may be the least satisfying one you can choose. It tends to become boring, keeps you indoors, doesnt affect muscles in your upper body (unlike vigorous cycling out of doors), and is a hard habit to maintain. (Nevertheless, if it works for you, go for it!) Practice aerobic sports only. The point of practicing a daily routine out of doors is to get plenty of fresh air. Its simply more invigorating than working out inside a gymnasium or health club. Do it and youll discover the many reasons for choosing out-of-doors activitiesexcept during inclement weather. Not every sport or physical activity will help you achieve a proper balance. Four problems with weight lifting (or upper body work), for example, are: (1) it isnt sufficiently aerobic; (2) since weightlifting is nothing more than a programmed form of bodily injury, it requires you to take days off between sessions to repair the damage done to your muscle tissues; therefore, it isnt a sport that lends itself to a daily routine; (3) its a sport best practiced for cosmetic rea43

sons, not to balance a sedentary lifestyle; and (4) weightlifting is usually added to aerobic and other forms of exercises when practiced, which may make your workout sessions too lengthy to be practiced every day. Thus, if you like weight lifting, know why youre doing it and realize that you still need to practice aerobic (fitness) exercises on a daily basis. Weightlifting has nothing to do with fitness. Practice non-competitive sports primarily. Competitive sports are poor candidates to balance a sedentary lifestyle because they require partners as dedicated as you must be to commit to daily practice. If you can find a reliable partner, great! If you cant, try cycling, swimming, running, or solo dancing. It may not seem like enough to exert yourself only once per day for a half-hour; but if you do so every day, youll repeat your daily exertions thousands of times. However, if you start out exerting yourself several times each day (under the theory that more is better), there will come a time when you wont want to exert yourself at all! Therefore, suggestions that you should divide a daily 30minute exercise schedule into more than one period are wholly inappropriate. Daily bicycle riding for a half-hour over a controlled terrain is the best choice for anyone living near a large park or similar safe pathway. If one truly exerts oneself, the bicycle will provide both aerobic benefits (through the legs) and sufficient weight-bearing anaerobic benefits (through the arms) as one pulls on the handlebars going up hills at near maximum possible speed for ones body and condition. Exercise your body out of doors, not indoors, whenever possible. Dont count. If you have to count repetitions for an exercise, youll count the days until you dont have to count reps any more. In-line skating is dangerous except for young, accomplished skaters. In order to achieve a proper balance, you must choose an aerobic activity that will exercise your body to around 80% of its capacity (meaning that you should approachbut not go pastthe point where you become winded.) It represents hard work! Walking around the city (which you need to do during a World Walkwhich has nothing to do with exercising!) simply wont do. You may live longer if you walk vigorously every day, but you probably wont live as long as you will if you push yourself to 80% of your capacity driving your bike up six hills every single day as fast as you can comfortably go. Be sensible, of course, and realize that 80% of your capacity may represent only 20% of someone elses capacity, whos been doing the same thing for years. Thats another reason to avoid competition. Its never fair since you can almost never match your competitions age, experience, talent, etc., exactly, on a continuing basis. 44

The aerobic activity you choose must exercise most of the muscle groups in your body. Note that some physical trainers erroneously rule out cycling as a conditioning sport because it exercises only leg muscles. They forget that if you cycle properly, climbing one or two steep hills as fast as you can on your daily ride, youll wind up strengthening your arm and pectoral muscles as much as you would by lifting heavy weights several times a daywithout damaging your muscle tissues! That fact is what makes cycling the best sport possible for balancing a sedentary lifestyle. Learn to breathe properly. There are many practices (especially some yoga exercises) that stress proper breathingwhile sitting on a floor! Its hard to imagine what good these exercises do, although practitioners claim many benefits. But when youre engaged in a balancing sport activity, just before you begin to drive yourself really hard is the time to breathe deeply and force the air out as much as you canbefore you become winded. Dont wait until youre winded to start breathing deeply! In fact, never let yourself become winded! Its not a necessary adjunct to physical activity. Keep yourself at the 80% level, which means stopping short of being winded. Learn to anticipate your bodys need for oxygen and take in plenty of air before your body starts forcing you to breathe too hard. The 80% level is an estimate, of course. These things cant be measured precisely. However, theres no point in driving yourself to near exhaustion, or inducing a heart attack. Theres also no point in taking it easy. Youll just waste your time. If you keep doing your physical activity sport properly, after several years youll learn to anticipate the precise amount of energy you can expend without endangering your body. Your breathing will tell you when youre at the correct stage. If you become winded youll know youve gone too far too fast. _________________________________ Almost every weight-loss diet ever invented includes a clear admonition that whoever goes on the diet should also exercise. Since these admonitions are obviously included more to protect manufacturers against lawsuits than to protect customers, most people pay no attention to them, usually believing that theyre so special theyll never die! However, because of the inadequacy and falseness of the information given out by virtually all diet plans, customers who take them seriously may logically infer that once the weight is lost, they dont have to exercise any longer. This idea is idiotic. Logic says that if you practice the piano, or exercise long and hard enough, you should arrive at a point where you dont have to practice any more. (Tell that to a concert pianist!) Nevertheless, the body doesnt work according to logic. Exercises done for maintenance purposes must be kept up and repeated life-long. Performances, competitions, athletics, recreation, swimming (in a large body of water, not in a small pool where youre forced to go back and forth or tether yourself), skating, walking (with a destina45

tion and purpose in mind other than mere getting out), dancing, etc., differ from mindlessly repeated exercises because they fulfill a practitioners intention (or action) not an instructors directions. The mechanics of a bicycle multiply the riders effort into speed (through mechanical gears) and make the experience more enjoyable. Water in a pool does the same for swimmers. Shoes assist the runner and in-line skates the skater. Many people find the use of mechanical sporting aids (such as exercise bicycles) boring. (Thus, listening to music or readings through earphones enhance the use of these devices.) The reason theyre boring is that what you do on them isnt an action. Its the equivalent of an actor standing on stage and reading an entire page of a telephone directory. The words and numbers have no purpose or significance. No one wants to hear them and no actor wants to recite them. They arent a suitable vehicle for performance. On the other hand, for those who are Acting Well, stationary bicycles can substitute for traveling bicycles provided special techniques are used to push the body and the brain. Imaginative techniques such as biking to pieces of music that lend themselves to speeding up for faster passages thus forcing the workout to extend to the level of push can do as much good for the body as real bikes and over long periods of time. However, the imagination in these cases may have to be continually stimulated by new techniques. If an actor over-rehearses one section of a playsay for an entire yearand ignores the other sections, then finally comes to perform the play, the section that was over-rehearsed will stand out in a peculiar way. Similarly, some men spend most of their time exercising only certain muscles (e.g., pecs and abs) but not others (such as back muscles). These men become front-heavy, look odd, and walk in an unnatural manner. Naturally, if you sun yourself on only one side of your body, the results will be one-sided. Optimal benefits from fitness exercises are not confined to health benefits. Psychological benefits may be far more dramatic and obvious than physical benefits, especially at first. Thus, the benefits from fitness exercises on character formation and reformation are inestimable.

Proposal for The Palace of Health ( )

I propose to write a book about keeping healthy that includes a running journal about a health initiative in Russia and the development of an actual research facility and health spa hotel called the Palace of Health, which will be a sort of mini-Monte Carlo Mayo Clinic dedicated to health maintenance. Plans are to build the new palace (possibly out of a restored, older structure) within a 10-mile necklace of royal palaces (collectively 46

called Palaade) overlooking the Bay of Finland just outside St. Petersburg, Russia. The actual Palace of Health may be located immediately next door to the presidential dacha currently being readied for the pleasure and recreation of President Boris Yeltsin. The financing and construction of Palaade will take several years. It involves 38 buildings that form part of a billion-dollar development project for which my partner, who lives in Russia, and I, from New York, are marketing consultants. (We named the project Palaade.) The current owner is the City of St. Petersburg, which is backing the project together with several Russian banks, and which has promised special tax and visa entry considerations for foreigners traveling to St. Petersburg for the sole purpose of visiting (and gambling) at Palaade. The project promises to provide a fascinating subject for a series of books. In fact, many of my adventures in Russia over the past five years can add depth, suspense, and humor to the story. So far these adventures include being advisors to the former Mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly A. Sobchak (under the immediate direction of his Deputy Mayor, Vladimir V. Putin, head of International Projects for the City); being executive producer of two film festivals; working as a facilitator and liaison between the City government and such companies as ICN and Merck Pharmaceuticals, Arthur Andersen & Co., and Holiday Inn; helping to pull in and facilitate a $75 million Wrigley chewing gum factory near St. Petersburg; and surviving three Mafiya killings of associates (including the most famous contemporary American killed in Russia, Paul Tatumwhose firm, Americom, was a former client of my company, Circles International). Meanwhile, in the summer or fall of 1998, a retreat in the United States is planned for several inductees (including an M.D., a masseur, a health psychologist, an acting teacher, a physical therapist, et al.) into a pilot project whose purpose is to design a health maintenance program called Sensible Care. These individuals will share information and techniques with each other. A syllabus, to be translated into Russian, will be assembled from the proceedings of the retreat for later distribution at the Palace of Health, as well as other family practice and cardiology clinics and health centers throughout Russia. The book I propose to write will include that syllabus in efforts to clarify the muddy waters that result when health and science in any country are mixed together. The Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundations has been aware of this health initiative since a visit to the Institute (at our invitation) by Mayor Sobchak in April 1997. The deputy regional director for Russia of the Open Society Institute has identified the initiative as a perfect paradigm for programs to be financed by the $500 million that George Soros recently pledged to redress medical problems in Russia. Among those problems is the failure of preventive medicine in that part of the world. The average age of death for men in the former Soviet Union is 58 years. Annual alcohol consumption, at more than four gallons, is the 47

highest in the world. This situation is a catastrophe that affects the life and death of literally millions of people and their families. The forces wreaking this Slavic havoc are the usual suspects, of course: smoking, alcoholism, dietary chaos, stress, lack of exercise, and lack of preventive medical care. Practically everyone recognizes the problem; but only a few rare people recognize the root cause and have the intelligence, courage, tenacity, and skills to do something about it. Dr. Dmitry Baklanov, the first cardiologist in Russia to perform angioplasty and to implant arterial stents, is one of those people that represents the true potential of Russia. Although he was only born in 1970, he has already published (with his mentor, Dr. Ronald R. Masden, a world-renowned cardiologist from Louisville) the only book available in Russian about the newest techniques in cardiology. He is the only cardiologist in St. Petersburg sufficiently experienced to perform angioplasty safely and to teach it to others. There are only about three other doctors in all of Russia (all of them in Moscow) who have performed as many procedures as Dr. Baklanov, who has done more than 1,000. Dr. Baklanov contends that behavior modification can save more lives than all the invasive and non-invasive therapies currently available for cardiac patients. Thus Sensible Care, as adapted to the former Soviet Union, will initially be offered to heart patients; but it is a program that can be a lifesaver and life-enhancer for everybody. Key to the cardiac program is the theory that diet, exercise, and relaxation, which are commonly and appropriately prescribed for people recovering from a heart attack, may be inappropriate for individuals who happen to be at high risk of infarction (as well as for generally healthy people) but have not yet experienced cardiac symptoms, heart attacks, or strokes. The problem is that healthy individuals lack the fear, the desire, and the willpower to stick to diets, exercise daily for half an hour, and practice some form of contemplative relaxation for 40 minutes to an hour every day. Therefore, a different approach to the problem is required. Sensible Care may provide the answer. Another innovative aspect of the book will attempt to popularize some of the theories of consciousness developed by Gerald Edelman. (I consider Dr. Edelman to be the only person whose work on this subject is worth popularizing.) One of the results of Edelmans work is that it belies the scientific use of supernatural concepts associated with consciousness, such as mind, soul, spirit, self, will, and so on. The book will develop a theory based on Edelmans of why these supernatural terms seem meaningful (because evolution genetically fashioned our brains to be able to communicate these concepts amongst ourselves and understand them perfectly. However, our understanding does not transfer cross-species or into objective science because the terms dont specify anything in nature. Not being of value to science, they have no place in a theory of how to improve 48

public health). Edelmans Darwinian theories of brain mapping affect modern epistemology as profoundly as Darwins theories influenced Nineteenth Century theories of creationism. The inference that can change the publics theory of health most is that sensible methods (i.e., methods derived through the senses) to provide health maintenance through behavioral techniques (such as the Stanislavski System of acting) work better than moral injunctions to increase willpower, etc. (with the corollary attachment of blame to victims of diseases like cancer). Unfortunately these revolutionary changes in thinking (about thinking) have not yet been generally accepted or disseminated in the public health sector. Therefore there is, and probably will continue to be for some time, a conservative resistance to change not unlike the current resistance against evolutionism by creationists; except that the new resistance takes place in the health club, kitchen, and supermarket instead of in churches and schoolrooms. One of the main purposes of the book, therefore, will be to explain and disseminate, in a more popular way than I can in these few pages, the exciting new knowledge about how new thinking processes can foster good health and happiness. Many distinguished writers are currently playing around with consciousness. In my opinion (and I presume Edelmans) most of these writers are simply wrong and need to be challenged. (Unfortunately Edelman has failed to enter a critical arena with his dissenting colleagues.) Steven Pinkers recent book (which seems to be a best seller) is a prime example of wrong-headedness in its critique of Edelmans work. Its title How the Mind Works is meaningless to anyone who realizes that there is no such thing as mind; or that we can all get along just fine, thank you very much, while discussing brain activity, without having to stray far from the word brain. Despite an otherwise interesting book about neuroscience, Pinker seems to have a curious need, for a scientist, to validate the supernatural. The reason for developing (or reporting about) a theory of consciousness in this book is that people need to understand better how their brains work in order to stop being slaves to their appetites so that they may become masters of their character. Books like Care of the Soul that seem Ah! So meaningful! are actually not helpful when it comes to working out a practical plan to maintain or improve mental and physical health. Readers of The Palace of Health who want to change their lives according to Sensible Care precepts will be encouraged to enroll in support groups and to use interactive computer programs that will undoubtedly encourage them to subscribe to future publications relating to Sensible Care. These interactive programs will encourage the use of personal computers to disseminate practitioners experiences and theories to others. Sharing or enlightening others is an essential technique to help make Sensible Care work. Alcoholics Anonymous has practiced this principle for decades. 49

The syllabus will form the first part of Palace of Health (I hope in the manner that Swanns Way formed the first part of Prousts great work). It will be written more or less in the breezy, random style of this introduction. Since Bianca Jagger will be involved in the retreat, the title of the first book to be published may include her name. She has promised to join the pilot project team to create the syllabus, compose a forward to the book, be photographed for the dustjacket, and make herself available for interviews about the subject of Sensible Carea topic about which she is passionate. Bianca Jagger is an articulate speaker and writer and I believe a great humanitarian. For a long time, she has been one of the most famous women in the worldespecially in Europe. For many years, she has consistently used her celebrity to testify on behalf of victims who have suffered from such human and natural disasters as poverty, earthquake, war, ethnic cleansing, and sexual abuse. She championed relief efforts on behalf of Central American homeless people in 1981, and raised money and consciousness to help earthquake victims in Nicaragua, and Honduran refugees attacked by Salvadorans. In 1993, she helped fly a young boy out of Bosnia to save his eyesight. The following year she documented Serbian atrocities against the Bosnians. Two years later she described to me her successful efforts to save the life of a condemned, abused woman. She's made many speeches and appeared before a congressional sub-committee. Her advocacy in joining the Human Rights Watch continues to protect peoples freedom throughout the Americas. The public will believe and respect her ideas about health. The book will be of interest to managed care providers, doctors, patients, and subscribers to managed care health insurance programs. (In fact, the more the books precepts are followed, the more profitable insurance companies may become!) Sensible Care is often free. Critical care (and sometimes virtual care, which includes alternative medicine) that insurance companies are expected to support can be crushingly expensive. Insurance companies have been required, in the past, to provide some kind of preventive medicine to their subscribers. Because the concept of preventive medicine is flawed by the current conflicts between critical and Sensible Care, the provisions that insurance companies have made to fulfill requirements by the US Department of Health, Education & Welfare, for example (in order to get initial funding for managed care programs from the government), have been pathetic at best and misleading or incorrect at worst. For example, the current flurry of doctor-approved brochures just large enough to fit inside a #10 envelope with the monthly bill offer a few health tips and little else. (How to Stop Smoking. Oh, sure!) Nobody reads these throw-aways, and nobody follows them. The most these blurbs can accomplish is to make some people with bad coughs feel guilty for a spell before they refill their lungs with smoke. With proper marketing, HMOs can be encouraged to distribute 50

The Palace of Health to consumers, and perhaps even use the book to form support groups that will recruit new policy-holders and Sensible Care practitioners. A recently forged relationship between the American Health Foundation (the organization that first proved the relationship of smoking and cancer) and the Sensible Care health initiative in Russia will greatly expand the marketing opportunities associated with this project. There are many ancillary Sensible Care products connected to publication of the book that celebrities will be able to sell on television (along with the book!). These products do not include the diet breakthroughs, dietary supplements, exercise machinery, or the kind of psychic guru advice currently being offered. What might be sold, however, are packages of healthy menu food, which may be purchased on a regular basis by telephone more cheaply and conveniently than from a supermarket. Other products that are helpful in some cases (such as certain kinds of tea) may also be offered. December, 1997 _________________________________ The above proposal was intended for submission to publishers. It included several other sections, which are reproduced elsewhere in this edition. Bianca Jaggers views on preventive medicine, particularly her feminist perspective, were more conservative than the views expressed here. After reading this material, she withdrew from the project.

Your Fascist Guru

The most important information I can share with you is to explain why diets dont work, why people join health clubs and stop going, and why Americans who get enthusiastic over meditation practices (or other self-hypnotic programs) eventually stop doing them. All of the self-help techniques that dont work are based on restrictive punishment techniques that usually elevate a doctor, preacher, teacher, personal trainer, or guru to god-like status in order to manipulate you into paying for their products or services. Thats pretty good for them because it sells their books, lectures, or dietary supplements. However, it usually turns out to be useless for you. All of these self-improvement techniques are politically based. The politics involved (prepare for a shock) are fascist in nature. Theyre all based on the kind of politics that exist in a state faced with a crisis. We Americans (for whom Im writing) are supposed to believe in democracy and in the independence and rights of the individual. Fascism takes the opposite view by insisting that the needs of the state 51

override the needs of the individual. In a time of national crisis, such as a war, every state will become somewhat fascist out of selfprotection. For that reason, fascist states are known to provoke wars in order to maintain their rulers special powers. Most diet book writers will address you as if youre facing a crisis: Youre too fat! Or you might develop a heart condition and need to reduce cholesterol! Whatever is wrong, you need to do something about it now! Crisis! Therefore, these writers recommend strong methods. You must stop doing this and you must start doing that! No fats, carbohydrates, or protein! Or only fats, carbohydrates, or protein! (Americans have been amazingly patient with all the confusion and scandalous inconsistencies that continually crop up in the field of nutrition!) You can do it in 10 days! Or 30 days!or your money back! If the crisis passesthat is, if you lose the weight you want to loseyoull need to go on a maintenance diet (sold by the same enterprising authority) in order to avoid another crisis. This crisis thinking works only as long as youre convinced theres a crisis. However, its amazing how human beings get used to things, or how one crisis is supplanted by a different problem. The reason diets dont work is that they all depend on crisis-thinking, and crises always passsooner or later, usually sooner. Thats when the diet goes to hell. Therefore, I wont use the word diet in any of my recommendations. I didnt go on a diet to lose my weight, and you shouldnt either. They dont work. Exercise programs suffer from the same problems and for the same reason. Think how such words and phrases as discipline, by the numbers, or on the ground, and give me 100 push-ups! clearly signify punishment and unpleasantness. 100 push-ups cant be any more rewarding than 100 lashes with a whip! In a country threatened with annihilation, soldiers (and citizens) must follow orders or be punished. Rules are established for which no thought or creativity is appropriate. Think how soldiers are treated during wartime: how theyre forced to regulate their life so they can be fed, bedded, kept physically strong, and moved wherever needed, en masse, quickly and efficiently. Theres no time for democracy in the Army! Its a hierarchical organization subject to unified commands. Battles would be lost if it werent so. Then realize that exercise programs in America are usually based on Army practices, whether conducted at health clubs or supervised by personal trainers. School exercise programs for children, especially, are modeled on Army techniques. For example, theyre generally performed en masse. Movements are performed by the numbers. People wear uniforms, some of them elaborate, some expensive, some just silly. Theres a lot of counting involved, whether for a repetitive movement or to hold a particular position while counting 52

to some value. Its the counting that gives away the noxious qualities that make these exercises ultimately fail as lifetime practices. Exercises by the number are surely valuable for crisis situations. For example, if your broken leg has been in a cast for several months, youll need to do some physical therapy that involves repetitious movements to regain your strength quickly and efficiently. However, once the strength is regained, crisis exercise is inappropriate (and excessively boring) if, for example, youre looking for something to do with your body every day for the rest of your life. Therefore, I dont generally use the word exercise to describe what I believe should maintain fitness. One doesnt play games by the numbers. You might count nine innings of a baseball game, but you dont repeat and count 100 movements in any rational or fun form of physical recreation. Soldiers are regimented. That word (based on the Latin word for rule) means soldiers are subject to the rules and regimen of their leaders political regime. Regimental politics can influence the mind in devious and subtle ways. For example, the organization of an Army goes back to prehistory when some groups (at least the ones that survived) were organized physically and psychologically under the policy rules (and usually religions) controlled by the most powerful leaders. You can see vestiges of this system in the meditative practices of the East in which individuals are encouraged to concentrate on their breathing in order to submerge their consciousness in a world soul, or some such concept; aspire to a nirvana that precludes revolution or syndicalism (certainly a valuable technique in 15th Century India!); and ultimately, renounce desire. Think how advantageous these psychological techniques would have been to an all-powerful maharaja whose subjects might otherwise covet and take away his women and personal wealth! As you can see with eastern meditation practices, the psychological work you must do to change your life extends into moral, religious, and spiritual spheres. You may do better staying away from these spheres if they cause you needless guiltespecially while youre growing up. (I confess to believing that imposing certain kinds of sexual-moral guilt on children is one of the cruelest forms of child abuse, and should be punished accordingly!) I dont mean that people should have no regard for morality; just that no one else has the right to impose their morality on you or me. When anyone claims to be able to recognize supernatural sin, you can be sure youre dealing with a moral fascist whose politics want to take you in the direction Hitler took Germanydown the garden path of National Socialism, exterminating immoral scapegoats as they march. Anyone with a recipe for or against sin is advocating a fascist moral diet that goes along with the other harmful forms of fascist absolutism. Such diets dont work in Americanor should they. We live in a pluralistic society, which means that there are many groups and 53

individuals who should maintain their unique social and spiritual points of view while striving heartily to love one another and value each others differences. That path is the only way to preserve the peace. I debated whether to use the word fascist in connection with contemporary brain, body, and nutritional techniques. After all, its a loaded word. (Authoritarian might have done as well.) Then one day I found myself writing about how angry I was that the truths I understand about these things, which I discovered only after much struggle, had been ignored for so many years by the rest of the world. Im going to slaughter the mother-fuckers for paying no attention to me! is exactly what I wrote in my journal, with visions of a best-selling book establishing me as a rich and famous authority. I would foist my philosophy on a nation, make all its citizens devote an hour a day to the kind of psychic reconditioning I had been doing; then spend another 30 minutes straining their bodies to recondition their physique; then slowly watch their eating habits lead them into universal good health. My motives went way beyond authoritarianism. I was angry at a world only I was talented enough to capture and rule through the force and appeal of my ideas. When I studied political philosophy in college, I was fascinated to read the works of Frederich Nietszche and the fascist philosophers who promulgated the policies of Hitler and Mussolini. I read these writers in the late 1950s, familiar with the consequences of their thinking, but not aware, until I read them, that fascism had a clever and captivating intellectual basis behind it. I felt the strong appeal that fascism can haveespecially to college undergraduates. Thus, when I read what I wrote about changing the world through a philosophical system of my own, I recognized my fascist intentions. I was lusting for the same rude power that tempted others before me dictators who ran countries, established professions, uncovered scientific truths, painted pictures, and lead armies. I would rule the world and affect history. I would dictate. I was a fascist! Democracy is a place where ideas are supposed to compete, not annihilate each other. Therefore, my resolve to squash the foolish ideas of other writers, in order to demean their intentions, was inappropriate to a democratic nations destiny. For these reasons, I decided to retain the word fascist to describe the punishing self-help techniques that currently prevail. I call these flawed ideas fascist not to criticize the writers who promote them as much as to remind myself how easy it is for advice-givers to be lured into becoming a fhrer. Thus, my use of this particular F word is as much a warning to me as it is to you. Beware anyone who tells you that only they know the truth! They want to be your puppetmaster! I believe that you must disparage all the fascist techniques for punishing your bodys appetites before you can create a reward system for yourself that will work. (You especially need to relieve yourself of any guilt!) My problem is that I could easily publish a book 54

that tells you how to punish yourself by restricting your diet, exercising by the numbers, or quashing your intellect through transcendental mediation. However, how can I tell you how to reward yourself through a permissive menu, free-form recreation, and stimulating consciousness, if you can only learn to do these things yourself? How you accomplish these tasks will depend on unique things in your life about which I know nothing: such as what particular foods you may find at your local supermarket, what your religious background is, or what recreational opportunities exist in your neighborhood park. The truth is, you need to write your own book. Then, when you realize it wont matter to anyone but you, youll need to have the wisdom and good taste to tear it up. As you see, Ive not yet grown that wise or sensible. October 1997

A Preventive Cardiology Program for Russia and the World

By Ronald R. Masden, M.D. and Marshall Yaeger Under the patronage of the Anatoly A. Sobchak Preventive Cardiology Fund (a memorial program to the late first elected mayor of St. Petersburg, Russia), Anchor-International Foundation has designed a preventive cardiology program (the Program) that has two distinct missions: The primary mission is to develop a risk factor intervention program for Russia. The secondary mission is to develop a better compliance program than currently exists for applications throughout the developing and developed world. Ronald Masden, M.D., the Medical Director of the Foundation, worked as an epidemiologist in Washington, DC for two years setting up and maintaining cardiovascular risk factor intervention programs. Dr. Masden will supervise the Program. He will be assisted by participating physicians, epidemiologists, and scientists in the U.S. and Russia. To raise public and financial support in Russia for the Project, Mayor Sobchaks widow, Ludmila N. Sobchak, former member of the Russian Duma Health Committee and Co-Chairman of the Sobchak Fund, will join the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, in bringing attention to the project and in raising money in the Russian Federation to support the Foundations operations overseas. Dr. Masdens Program is likely to be the most effective and efficient way to affect Heart Disease in Russia. The program is based on information, which has been collected and scientifically supported over the past 50 years, that forms the basis for the United States vast 55

prevention programs. Many of these programs are sponsored by the American Heart Association, as well as other organizations, for risk factor reduction. These prevention programs have been proven effective many times over in reducing morbidity and mortality rates of heart disease throughout the world. Thus the project assumes that existing risk reduction methods are the most efficient and effective way to reduce the risk of heart disease in Russia and hopefully to impact on that countrys (and similar Third World countries) morbidity and mortality rates. The Program will be supported through government, individual, corporate, and foundation funding. It will include a compliance program (Acting Well) developed and supervised by Marshall Yaeger, who is the general manager of the Foundation. The Acting Well part of the project consists of two formats: Intermediate Acting Well and Complete Acting Well. The Program will take place during 2000-2002 throughout as much of Russia as resources will allow. _________________________________ Less than 5% of the Russian population can afford basic medical services. The remainder must rely on a medical system that lags 50 years behind in modern technology and therapeutics. The vast majority of this population is very poor. Many of them are unable to obtain adequate nutritional food required for existence and have no access to food stores that contain proper nutritional elements. Moreover, they have little or no knowledge of heart disease and are unaware of the factors that can reduce their risk for heart-related problems. Therefore, in order to be effective, the Program has been designed to be easily accessible to the general public through local service centers that will be able to screen 50 to 100 people per day per center. All individuals found to have risk factors will then be served by appropriate interventional departments (such as nutrition, hypertension, exercise, etc.). Such high volumes of patients will not permit close attention to each patient. Therefore various educational methods will be explored and tested. The most successful ones will be developed to educate and encourage compliance through various media currently available in Russia. As part of its secondary mission (which is to develop a better compliance program throughout the world than currently exists), Acting Well will be developed and tested in the United States in order to extend the established benefits of long-term prevention and thus eventually further reduce the rate of Russias major problem of coronary atherosclerosis, the number one killer in the Russian Federation. While the prevention aspects of the Program have already been well defined and proven effective over the past 30 years, motivational programs are currently poorly defined. None have demonstrated long-term effectiveness. Therefore, a compliance program that helps 56

to solve the problem of poor motivation, universally present in virtually every human being, will make a real contribution to world health. Since both the Program and Acting Well can be exported to any country; and since Acting Well can be applied to any form of human endeavor requiring motivation and compliance, the Foundations clinical trials may prove that Acting Well is a highly marketable entity that can produce sufficient revenues to support the missions of the Foundation. This potential profitability factor may therefore augment (and possibly even make unnecessary) further charitable fundraising efforts needed to support the Foundations programs in future years. _________________________________ The secondary mission (in the United States) will begin and run concurrently with the primary mission (in the Russian Federation). However, the full Acting Well project will not emerge from its experimental status until supporting articles have been published in authoritative cardiology journals. Randomized clinical trials will be conducted using Russian patients screened in Russia and found to have one or more abnormalities (for example, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, or tobacco dependency) will be invited to participate in the Russian trials. Audio/visual programs will be developed to be used to teach and instruct patient groups. The study will probably be limited to a population that tests positively for a combination of two factors (for example, hyperlipidemia and obesity). A combination of these forms can be found in an extremely large group in the Russian Federation. Ideally, clinical trial patients will be randomized into three groups: (1) Patients offered no special treatment or individual supervision except for initial visits. (2) Patients offered Intermediate Acting Well (an educational program conveyed through pamphlets, etc. designed for patients who cannot afford ordinary medical treatment). (3) Patients offered Complete Acting Well (an educational program conveyed through personal attention and service, designed for a minorityfor example, 5%of patients for whom costly medical preventive or rehabilitative treatments present no impediment). Patients in each group will be followed over a prescribed period to determine relative compliance ratios (that is, the degree of compliance measured primarily by the number of patients who are still participating in the three programs when the study is concluded). The study will take 12 to 18 months. It will be conducted mainly in St. Petersburg, Russia. About 300 people will participate. The primary objective will be to demonstrate a statistically significant difference between the number of patients with a high compliance ratio in Groups 2 and/or 3 compared to Group 1. A secondary objective will be to determine if there is a significant difference in the amount of lipid and weight reduction (and possibly non-medicated blood pressure levels) in Groups 2 and/or 3 as compared to Group 1, in which 57

case leading cardiology journals are likely to publish results that will affirm the value of the Program (combined with Acting Well) to public health in Russia, and by implication to all other countries. In order to identify the location and initial Russian population to which randomized clinical trials of the Program will apply, we will establish a number of service centers distributed according to the total number of individuals initially served. These centers will be conveniently located in order to serve the population most effectively. Russian Orthodox churches (because of the power to overcome local obstacles vested in the people who run them) have been suggested as the best locations for the purpose. A promotional campaign will be designed on both a regional and local basis. A regional campaign will require television, radio, and print advertising. Local campaigns can be initiated by brochures that are mailed or distributed door to door, and by telephone. Types of individuals to be included in the program will be identified (for example, adults 21 or over that do not have chronically debilitating diseases). Individuals with known chronic debilitating disease will be referred to pre-selected representatives of local practicing physicians and hospitals. Follow-up of individuals with identified risk factors will be maintained for at least one year or as long as funding permits. Each of the Centers will consist of the following departments or sub-programs: Screening: All individuals will be initially screened prior to entry into any of the interventional programs. Screening will consist of an administered questionnaire (to determine demographics, lifestyle, nutrition, smoking, exercise, etc.), a brief medical survey, plus a short psychological evaluation. Weight, blood pressure, lipid, and blood sugar determinations will be made. EKG and possibly exercise treadmill tests will be performed. An educational audio-visual program describing the Program, the importance of risk factor reduction, and the need for patient participation will be delivered. Participants will return in 2 weeks for follow-up and instruction as to their relative risk for cardiovascular disease. Those individuals with identified risk factors will be asked to return to the appropriate departments for inclusion in interventional program(s). All participants will be entered into Acting Well. Any individuals who are identified as having heart disease, severe diabetes, malignant hypertension, the effects of a stroke, chronic lung disease, terminal cancer, or any other severe or life-threatening diseases, will be referred to a medical panel consisting of representatives of local physicians and hospitals. Nutrition: This department will be headed by a nutritionist (either a Registered Nurse or a medical doctor) and at least two assistants. The RN/MD will assess the patients and prescribe appropriate medications. Patients with morbid obesity, severe (that is, insulin dependent) diabetes, and familial hypercholesterolemia will be excluded or referred to the Physician Panel. A laboratory technician will obtain blood for a lipid profile and fasting blood sugar level. Entrance 58

criteria will include: total cholesterol >199 and/or low-density lipoprotein [LDL] >160 and/or triglycerides >200; fasting blood sugar >120; body weight: >15% above predicted norm. Exercise: An exercise physiologist will head this program. A consulting cardiologist will direct the medical assessment of the patients. Exercise assistants will support the program. An exercise prescription will be developed and prescribed according to age and sex. Entrance Criteria: Patients 21-39 should be capable of performing prescribed exercise activities. Patients >39 who have undergone a negative treadmill exercise test. Patients with positive exercise tests will be referred to Physician Panel. Hypertension: A physician/nurse team will direct this program. Two technicians will be hired to measure blood pressure. The laboratory will be utilized to obtain blood for renal function evaluations. The physician, depending on the level of patients blood pressure and subsequent follow-up control, will give appropriate prescriptions for antihypertensives. Patients manifesting secondary causes of hypertension (for example, coarctation, renal artery stenosis, Cushings disease, etc.) will be excluded. Patients with moderate to severe renal disease will be excluded. Entrance Criteria: Systolic blood pressure 140 210. Diastolic blood pressure 90 120. Smoking Cessation Program (To be developed.) Acting Well, a motivational compliance program: Control for a Lifetime, referred to the Motivational Department. (To be developed.) April 2000

Permanent Change
Cardiologists typically tell patients just recovering from heart attack, You must change your lifestyle! People on diets want to change their weight and body image. People set goals in competitive sports to help them change their performance.

These examples illustrate a central problem in human behavior. Its that the likelihood of ultimate success in any of these cases is close to zero. It isnt that you cant or wont start out changing your behavior. As one portly man put it, Losing weight is easy! Ive done it many times! The problem is that once youve reached your goal the urge to change back to where you were before is almost overwhelming. 59

For example, a woman who weighs 150 pounds wants to reduce her weight to 135 pounds. She plans to go on a strict diet, starting Monday. On Monday, she begins a two-week ordeal depriving herself of all the snacks, desserts, and extra portions to which shes long felt entitled. She does so knowing that after two weeks of near starvation shell be free to savor, again, the treats she temporarily denied herself. Over the next two weeks, she manages to lose 15 pounds. When shes achieved her goal she does, indeed, return to her old delights sometimes with a vengeance. Within a few more weeks, she gains back all the weight she lost. Sometimes more! This unhappy saga describes the often-derided yo-yo diet. On the one hand, you can successfully change. However, as soon as the change takes effect you begin to look forward to the change back. Which change do you think is more compelling: changing to behavior that deprives you of goodies, or changing back to behavior that rewards you with goodies? When the question is put this way, the underlying problem of yoyo dieting appears in bold relief. Theres no question that the system of depriving yourself creates an overwhelming desire to change back to your original problem behavior. You may think that some people would eventually give up on such self-destructive behavior. However, the fact is, a yo-yo diet brings more immediate rewards than more sensible practices that may take months or years to establish an ideal weight. In other words, yo-yo diets are more fun, and the rewards for immediate weight loss are substantial. For one thing, almost everyone you know will compliment you on your new figure! However, the rewards for changing back to the old regime are substantial also. Now you can savor all the forbidden fruit you promised to reward yourself after your dieting ordeal, and which you can eat with impunity from guilt for the first few weeks. After all, you did lose all that weight! You might say that yo-yo dieters are addicted to their up and down practice, although physical addiction is probably not the issue. Simple pleasure is. The main problem is that change, when it involves yo-yo diets and similarly doomed enterprises, is what actors call going for results. They simply dont work. Heres why: Lets say youre an actor who wants to portray Hamlet on the Broadway stage. What kind of results might you wish for?

First, youll certainly want the audience to appreciate your work and reward you with applause.

60

Second, youll want to earn at least a four-figure per week salary. Third, youll want to garner rave reviews from the press. Finally, youll want your performance to go down in Broadway annals as a singular moment in the history of the theatre!

None of these results will help you portray Hamlet! The more you think about success or failure in the theatre, the more likely you are to alienate, rather than delight, the audience. You have to think about the character of Hamlet while onstage, not your career as an actor. However, even if you concentrate totally on your character, you still can fail by going for results. For example, you may think that Hamlet should be a dour figure who walks around like a depressed adolescent. (After all, his mother is sleeping with his fathers murderer!) Thus, you might regularly look down or away from your fellow actors. You might sigh before each line. You might move lethargically. And so on. None of this behavior will help you. Its superficial and wrong, and for a simple reason: If Hamlet acted that way in life (as well he might have done), and you asked him Whatre you doing, Hamlet? he would never reply, Cant you see, Im looking down, sighing, and moving lethargically? On the contrary, he would say something like, Im trying to find Ophelia because I have terrible news for her! If youre acting Hamlet and you substitute your own sense of what Hamlets bad news would be for you (and for your substituted Ophelia), and really cause yourself to believe it, it will cause you automatically to walk around depressed and dour onstagewhich will be a subconscious result that comes about from responding to your emotional substitutions. In other words, your consciousness would have no awareness of how depressed you look to others. Nor should it. Hamlets didnt! Nevertheless, although youre not aware of what you look like, the audience will believe you. Similarly, if you wish to be thinner, dont go for results. Dont tell yourself, I want to lose 15 pounds in two weeks. Thats like wanting to get good reviews for portraying Hamlet. It has nothing to do with how to achieve your ultimate goal. Be careful of all goals! For example, you probably dont know exactly what your ideal weight should be (or your ideal score in golf, for that matter); and probably no one else does, either. Avoid believing anyone who pretends to know. Ideal measurements depend on many factors, such as body type, time of life, genetics, and other unknowable factors. There are no absolute models. 61

On the other hand, if you practice good health habits lifelong, your body will bring itself to its ideal weight automatically. Your weight wont change much after that. Your objective should be a winners objective, which is to practice the actions of Acting Well (involving Morning Preparation, fitness, etc.). Your objectives should not include abstract measurements such as losing a certain number of pounds. Commercialization has a lot to do with encouraging going for results. Yo-yo diets are a good example of how economic interests have discovered that by promising people instantaneous results, everybody seems to win. People lose weight; but then they gain it back long after the marketer has pocketed the money. Youre a big boy or girl now, and so you should learn how the swindle (which almost all of us have fallen for it one time or another) works. The commercial forces that are currently encouraging teeth whitening (among them, some unethical dentists) are additional examples of how going for a speedy result produces dubious outcomes. Brushing your teeth is a good example of a healthy activity that isnt goal oriented. You probably dont brush your teeth in order to make them whiter, because most people know that brushing doesnt make teeth whiter. But if you succumb to recent marketing campaigns for certain brands of toothpaste that claim to make teeth whiter, then youre going for results. The ultimate result, of course, is that youll waste your money. Your teeth wont get whiter (unless you apply bleaching pastes that are stronger than you can get in the typical whitener toothpastes). There would be no quick fix to it, because you would have to keep bleaching your teeth daily by yourself or periodically by a dentist. In the end, there may be no discernable or significant difference. However, after paying a lot of money, you may convince yourself that you have whiter teeth because of self-hypnotic suggestion. Many people walk around these days with unnaturally treated teeth. The more perfect their smile, especially when theyre older, the more they look like theyre wearing false teeth! The effect is the same as a man wearing a bad toupee. He only fools children. Part of how you can tell the difference between valid objectives (like telling Ophelia theres trouble in Denmark) and going for results (like trying to rouse applause) is to recognize the difference between temporary (quick or miraculous), result-oriented behavior, and the permanent nature of healthier habits. Theres one program in the fitness field, for example, that promises huge increases in strength by lifting weights only ten minutes a week. It seems safe and easy. How much damage can you do ten minutes? It sounds like every struggling body-builders dream. Although the physiology behind these programs may be sound, their temporary nature comes clear when you consider that after several years on such a program (which is virtually unthinkable) youd 62

finally reach a plateau beyond which it would be impossible for a human being to get stronger. At that point, you might be able to lift 1,000 pounds (for ten seconds). However, to what end? So that you can stop submitting your body to extreme forms of exercise? Its not a bad thing to be strong, but it wont alter or improve your life as much as daily fitness workouts that make permanent change possible. How can you tell the difference between permanent change and temporary quick fixes that are doomed to fail? For one thing, permanent change occurs only once in a lifetime. Its not quick and it doesnt depend on, or promise, specific results. Since you cant get frustrated if you have no expectations, permanent change can never disappoint you. Therefore, you can never slide back once youve made the change. Finally, the only way you can measure permanent change is by comparing the present to the past. You cant look into the future (as quick-fix marketers would have you do) and predict change, for no one can see into the future. Therefore, all quick-fix changes are marketers illusions. Permanent change, on the other hand, is indisputable. If you ever learn (through a program like Acting Well) how to comply to healthier brain and body schedules and decisions, youll find it impossible to go back to the sedentary, overweight, and semi-conscious human being you were before the change. When something that powerful affects permanent change in you, from that point on, only severe disability or death can stop you.

How to Prevent Heart Disease

A cursory analysis of preventive cardiology on the Internet websites of America will lead to more than 1,700 listings, about 100 of which are useful. Most of them are associated with health clinics or hospitals. These website marketing efforts employ many estimable adjectives in describing their institutional programs, such as: that they are aggressive (in attempting to control all risk factors); comprehensive (including, in tobacco intervention, counseling, follow-up, and drugs when necessary); computerized (as in diet analysis); emphasized and/or focused (for example on cholesterol and blood pressure or on eliminating risk); individualized (for nutrition assessment); integrated, multidisciplinary, and/or personalized (for example in an institutions particular approach to prevention); intensive (regarding education); and thorough (when making laboratory assessments). Specific programs in these aggressive, comprehensive, computerized, emphasized, focused, individualized, integrated, multi-disciplinary, personalized, intensive, and thorough programs include: assessments (of nutritional and risk profiles); counseling (for example, on appropriate exer63

cise, lifestyle changes, nutrition, obesity, physical fitness and therapy, stress, and tobacco); drugs (for example, for tobacco cessation and experimental programs); guidance, maintenance, and follow-up (for exercise, smoking cessation, and weight loss); information and education (for patients and families on how to make lifestyle changes and how to monitor heart health); intervention (for tobacco); management (of blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and stress); medical prescriptions (for example, for blood pressure medication, healthier diet, exercise and maintenance, or tobacco addiction); questionnaires (on family history, past history, or for a risk assessment profile); recommendations (for example, on exercise, or to point clients in the right direction for a healthier, longer life); referrals (for example, for smoking cessation); reviews (of dietary and exercise patterns); support services and groups (only one support group is listed; it meets once a month); and technical measurements, such as tests and laboratory assessments (body fat analysis, blood chemistry, echocardiograms, exercise tests and recommendations, and stress tests are mentioned). Lets take each program listed above group by group. Assessments of nutritional and risk profiles consist of giving professional advice on the results of the kind of technical tests clinics give their patients. These tests are billed either to patients or insurance companies, and the professionals who offer them are paid to administer and interpret them. In and of themselves, tests obviously do nothing to lower the risk of heart disease. They merely help professionals give more appropriate and specific counseling than might otherwise be possible. Assessments tend to serve the needs of professionals more than they do patients. For example, they are generally an important part of the marketing efforts of the institutions that offer them; and the client records they generate are often invaluable in helping defend professionals against lawsuits by litigious patients. Services that fall under the title of assessments include guidance, maintenance, follow-up, questionnaires, reviews, and technical measurements (which include tests and laboratory assessments mainly for high blood pressure and high cholesterol). Counseling consists of paying for professional advice on an appropriate course of action to reduce risk: for example, advice to join a health club or to exercise daily, advice to change ones lifestyle, advice to lose weight and keep physically fit, and advice to reduce stress and stop smoking. In other words, in a majority of cases the client pays a professional to tell the client things the client already knows and cant (or wont) do anything about. Counseling alone doesnt help motivate daily intense exercise, go on permanent diets that work, reduce reactions to stress, stop smoking, or comply to a physicians directions concerning medications. Other services that fall under the title of counseling include recommendations, information, and education. Information usually consists not of oral conversations but of printed pamphlets and other materials containing such helpful tips as what kind of lifestyle changes to 64

make and how to monitor vital signs. Pamphlets cant provide motivation. Education is a terribly expensive service if all it provides is pamphlets. Drugs (or medical prescriptions) are convenient and effective measures to provide health care to sick individuals; but they should not be the prescriptions of choice for healthy individuals. They may reduce blood pressure or cholesterol levels, for example, when taken regularly; or temporarily reduce craving for tobacco. However, aside from drug-related side effects, these medical specifics are remedies that do nothing to eliminate such bad practices as leading a sedentary lifestyle or eating mainly rich and fatty foods that lack essential nutrients. These lifestyle bad habits, especially when combined with others, increase cardiovascular risk more than high blood pressure as one gets older. Intervention generally refers to anti-tobacco drugs, and sometimes to experimental drugs that may do more harm than good, and are not guaranteed to reduce risk. Management consists of paying someone to measure blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and stress hormones, usually in order to monitor drug dosages on a continuing basis. Without a motivational program, these measures do little or nothing to lower risk. Referrals for smoking cessation are ways for experts to charge money in order to send patients to other experts who will charge more money for programs that may or may not stop people from smoking, but that will do nothing to eliminate other sources of risk. Support services and groups that meet only once a month probably occur too infrequently to do much good. If these groups have poor leadership, members will wind up with a situation in which the blind lead the blind. On the other hand, if the leadership is good, theres little purpose in combining people in groupsother than that the therapy is less expensive, which attracts more patients; and the leaders make more money. Most of these programs (especially drug prescriptions) are more suitable for someone who has had, or is about to have, a heart attack. Few of them are programs that healthy people can use to prevent reaching a stage where drastic measures become necessary. However, in the field of cardiology, repairing damage has a much higher success rate than preventing it. All of the programs listed above sound medically valid, intelligent, and responsible. However, if you analyze each of them, you wont find even one that, in and of itself, will cause someone with cardiovascular disease to change their lifestyle in order to live a longer and better life. Likewise, if you take all the programs collectively, even though no single one is ultimately effective, you might suppose that such a volume of efforts would add up to a healthier life style for Americans. However, as any school child knows, you can multiply any number at all by zero and you will still come up with zero! Thus, although it seems counter-intuitive, combining many programs to65

gether that ought to prevent heart disease wont prevent heart disease. In this exhaustive listing of services, one common point comes clear: You get what you pay for. If you pay for assessment, counseling, drugs, intervention, management, referrals, or support services you will get those services; but you wont get risk reduction because you havent paid for risk reduction. No one offers it, and therefore you cant get it. What you get from these providers is the implication that if you do what they tell you to do you will reduce your risk. However, what if you dont do what they tell you to do? What if you cant do what they tell you to do? What if you dont have the willpower to do what they tell you to do? Its easy to provide good advice, especially in the field of cardiology where so much is known about cardiovascular disease. However, too little is known about cardiovascular health, mainly because nobody can charge money for health. Its an end result in itself, not a means to an end. Other, more insidious problems make existing preventive cardiology programs ineffective. As one cardiologist put it, We only win when the patient loses. We lose when the patent wins. In order to train a patient to modify behavior, you have to put the patient in charge of the modification. (No one else can do it.) This effort takes the power away from a puppetmaster and ultimately makes a puppetmaster irrelevant. A doctor, on the other hand, who expects a patient to change a lifestyle, wants to stay in charge of the same patient. Few doctors would dream of putting their patients in charge of their own health! There may also be a subtle do what I say, not what I do problem with Type-A health professionals who smoke and overeat. Finally, accepting an effective behavior modification program marks as profound a change in a patients life as finding religion. In many ways, a successful behavior modification experience resembles a religious conversion, except that the new religion must be based on science, not faith. Health professionals cant preach this kind of religion unless they believe in it. Everyone believes in the value of the desired results; but as few professionals believe in, or will accept the possibility of, finding a commonly accepted method to achieve those results as will accept the idea that there may be only one religion that really works. If a simple and inexpensive (or free) program were made available that could alter someones lifestyle irrevocably and permanently, would doctors, clinics, or hospitals offer it? Probably not, for such a program would not involve assessment, counseling, drugs, intervention, management, referrals, or support services. Therefore, no one could charge money for it. If no one could charge for it, why would anyone offer it? Therefore theres a chronic need, not only in this country but throughout the world, to offer a replicable preventive program of excellence that can actually cause significantly large populations to modify their behavior in such ways as to preclude cardiovascular and 66

other forms of cellular and tissue damage that occur because of unhealthy lifestyles or bad habits. Such a program may not be able to be developed except by a non-profit organization that raises sufficient money to make the program effective, and that can afford to offer its free or low-cost services to the public without having to reward its investors. March 2000

The Right Choice

Is This You? Ive just passed an important birthday, and its killing me! What happened to my youth? What am I going to do now that Ive been gaining about a pound a year, and Id have to do some serious dieting to get back to a sensible weight? I keep putting it off, and it seems I gain a few more ounces every month. And, Im uncomfortable! Ive had to have my clothes let out, and Ive thrown away some wonderful things I just cant get into any more. I go into the kitchen and see some tasty food I dont need. I know I shouldnt pick it up. But, I do! Every single time! Why do I do that? What perverse little devil in my head makes me believe, at the time I make my decision to go off my imaginary diet, that I deserve it just this once? I dont understand! My doctors been measuring my blood pressure, which, like my weight, keeps going up. He told me to cut down on salt, and I tried that for about two days, and I hated it! (Have you ever tried to find food without salt in it? Trust me: you might rather be dead!) I think the real problem is at work, where Ive got a sadistic boss who puts unbearable pressure on me sometimes. I can never seem to get it right. I havent gotten fired yet, but I know the stress affects my pressure, and I dont know what to do about it. My doctor says that maybe I should try to meditate. But he also says, of course its easier to medicate. So now, my doctors got me on serious blood pressure medicine. I suspect he thinks its going to give me a few more years before I have a heart attack. Thank God, the side effects arent too horriblealthough I notice them. Ditto with my serum cholesterol! My percentages between the good and the bad stuff (I have no idea what that means!) are the opposite of what they should be. So, Im not supposed to eat eggs. Well see. I might develop a sugar problem because Ive had hypoglycemia since I was in my early twenties. But, having to give up desserts and the likewell, would life be worth it? Whats life about anyway? (I wish I knew!) Isnt it a matter of enjoying some pleasures now and then? And then you die? 67

I dont look forward to that, of course! But like that woman in Gone With the Wind, Ill think about it tomorrow. Or next year, or somethingwhich is definitely when Im going to stop smoking! I make a New Years resolution to quit just about every year and break it immediatelywhich means I cant live with anyone who doesnt smoke. (Of course, living with someone who smokes, which I have to do, makes it virtually impossible to quit!) Which brings up the subject of my love life. Im on my fourth relationship now, and the same damn thing keeps happening! Why? I know youre supposed to be faithful to your mate, but when someone whos really attractive, who I think might have the hots for me, gets interested, theres that little devil in me starts me going. And, the rest is pretty bad to talk about! Ive never been in a relationship with someone who was into the same offbeat sexual things I like (or vice versaand I do mean vice!) Just never got lucky that way. So, when you start playing around with others, the incompatibility at home gets worse. You really lose interest in the one youre supposed to love! And if you cant get excited by the person youre living with, what then? What are you supposed to do? Hang on to the relationship and lie? Pretend? Cant do it! Not able! Ive too much integrity in me to be dishonest! Gotta move on! (Eventually.) Lets not talk about my drinking because Ill only get depressed (which is another problem thats developed). Of course, medical science tells us that drinkings good for you! (And, if you get depressed, take Prozac.) So, why shouldnt I drink? It isnt only the devil whos making me do itits a medically approved devil! Im certainly not an alcoholic! I can skip a day without a drink and not really miss it. (If Im sick, for example.) But when I get home at night, Ive gotta have that Chardonnay! I like the feeling! Whats wrong with that? Of course, it doesnt help me in the weight department. Quite the opposite, Im sure. (Because once Ive had that drink, all diet discipline goes out the window!) I dont feel so good the next morning, but I get over it by noon. Why do I get every cold that comes around, and always forget to ask for flu shots? Truth is, I hate doctors! Dentists are even worse! Those guys make a lot of money scaring people. All this prophylaxis and preventive medicineI think its hogwash! If fates got you marked, youre screwed. And, thats the whole ball of wax! (Isnt it?) One of these days Ive got to get in shape. I know Im losing it, slow but sure. Its harder to climb stairs, I get out of breath, and I get tired a lot. Im just not aging well like some of my more virtuous friends. (I have to admit I dont have many of those! Maybe two!) I should join a health club. (I know Ill never get myself to run or jog on 68

the streets. Not going to happen!) Theres a club two blocks from me. But, I havent had the time to check it out. I figure Id probably have to hire a personal trainer because I dont even know which machines I should be using. (Dont want to hurt myself, do I?) And I understand a personal trainer costs like $45 to $75 an hour. Thats a lotta moolah for a drill sergeant! Id rather do it myself, like get it from a book or something. But, I suppose I never will. I used to write when I was in college, and I think I wrote some pretty good short stories! I seem to have a knack for language, or at least dialogue; and, although I cant write fancy poetry or stuff like that, I think I can make a reader want to know whats gonna happen at the end! I really ought to do something intelligent like that. So, why do I spend three hours a night watching TV? (Four, when I watch the News!) What would I miss if I spent some of that time reading books or writing, for example? Someone told me they thought my problem was my character. LikeI dont have any! Or, like, I dont have any control over who I am. I used to believe in God when I was a teenager. (I could probably use Him right now, when I need to strengthen my character.) But as the years went by, it all seemed so foolish, like a great big con game! And Im definitely not into any kind of woo-woo spirituality! So, who has character, Id like to know? Who knows who they are? Do you? Are you telling me the truth? I guess I have two friends I went to school with whore into selfdiscipline and sports, who work hard professionally, have interesting (and different) hobbies, are trim and attractive, still look terrific in fashions they wore years ago, and seem to be growing old with style. Not that any of us are really old, but those two managed to stay really young lookingat least so far! The most interesting thing is their relationship. They were, like, high school sweethearts, and still are. So howd they do it? I guess my character is such Ill never be able to do what they did. Its just me, I suppose. Not in me. Or, its the devil in me. How do you get rid of that devil? I think my two friends are into something I dont know anything about. I wish I knew their secret! If this sounds like you.... Recently announced scientific information about the workings of the brain that will revolutionize neuroscience and the self-help industry can help you! If your doctor tells you youre edging toward a heart attack; if youve ever acted or wanted to act or are willing to learn how; and if 69

youve ever written a story or a poem or a letter, The Right Choice can help you develop new disciplines based on these revolutionary findings. This book will provide you with Mental Insurance Against Heart Attacks. These new practices, which are based on science, not spirituality, include Maharajayoga, a stress-reducing morning discipline that alternates contemplation with writing; Acting Well, which is a collection of daylong practices; and daily dietary and exercise routines that will become an integral part of your life. If you believe you have a weak character, The Right Choice will help you develop a strong one that resists the devil who made you do it. Youll lose weight, lower your blood pressure and bad cholesterol, end addictions to smoking, alcohol, drugs, and sex, and cure (and prevent further damage from) a variety of illnesses that strike people as they enter middle age. If youve tried a hundred diets and checked out mental practices like yoga or meditation; and if nothings done the trick, The Right Choice will explain why and correct the wrong things you were taught, so that youll be able to make the right choices from now on.

A Revolution of the Mind

There has recently occurred a paradigm shift in how the powers of the human brain are perceived. Dr. Eric R. Kandel, a leading scientist at Columbia University, compared the cause of this conceptual shift (reported in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and 19 months later in the journal Science) to the kinds of discoveries described by historian Thomas Kuhn that happen once in a lifetime, when one major scientific theory supersedes another. Until the results of experiments led by Dr. Elizabeth Gould of Princeton University, which caused this paradigm shift, were announced in The New York Times in March, 1998 and October, 1999, virtually all scientists accepted the idea that the mature human brain constantly loses neuron cells; and that, like voluntary muscle cells, brain cells can never be replaced. Dr. Gould demolished this assumption by proving that billions of new cells are formed throughout adulthood in the center of the brain; and that these cells migrate constantly to its peripheries where all our thoughts, dreams, and decisions are made. Dr. Fred Gage, a neurobiologist at the Salk Institute in San Diego, said the implications of Dr. Goulds findings were fabulously interesting. And Dr. Fernando Nottebohm, head of the laboratory of animal behavior at The Rockefeller University, who two decades before had reported how the brains of birds swelled with new cells during the mating season and shrank after the birds had bred, used the word amazing to describe Dr. Goulds remarkable vindication of 70

his controversial work. The scientific history behind these announcements, the characterizations of the people who made and debated the discoveries, and the social and scientific politics that impeded them, will provide some fascinating stories for The Right Choice. However, these details will only be the background for a much more astonishing tale. Dr. William T. Greenough, a neuroscientist at the University of Illinois, said that Dr. Goulds discoveries created a whole new ball game for addressing brain diseases, as soon as scientists can figure out how to harness the brains own restorative powers. But The Right Choice will show that even more profound inferences can be drawn right now from Dr. Goulds discovery that human behavior is controlled by a central organ in the body that may grow with exercise and atrophy when not properly used. So far, no one has properly drawn out the implications of these findings as they must affect the entire gamut of human psychology. The Right Choice will show specific ways of how the brain can make itself more creative as well as help the body cope better with the aging process. For example, the neurobiology of Dr. Bruce S. McEwen of The Rockefeller University (Dr. Goulds partner in her first seminal experiments) helped show that, under certain conditions, neurogenesis (the formation, migration, and integration of new brain cells) is interrupted by the effects of stress. These experimental findings suggest that, just as it is possible to stop neurogenesis, it may be possible to start, resume, or direct it in ways that may be beneficial to human behavior, motivation, creativity, self-discipline, and so forth. The Right Choice will lead the way to help people maximize neurogenesis; and it will suggest that without such a discipline at least one-half of the human population is doomed to suffer from all sorts of mental and physical problems associated with brain atrophy. These deficiencies are the ones that depend on self-discipline (or willpower). They include addictions to cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, and sex; as well as weight problems, cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, hypoglycemia and adult onset diabetes, arthritis, depression, sexual dysfunctions, and immunity problems. The main ways currently being sold to the public to treat these atrophy-related diseases include stress reduction methods, weight control diets, and various forms of physical exercise. The main thesis of The Right Choice is that separate efforts to treat weight and stress problems or to get in shape are doomed to fail unless neurogenesis specifically ties them together. Before Dr. Goulds work was announced, the author of The Right Choice had developed a series of brain/body exercises that came to be based on innovative (and still controversial) neurobological discoveries by other scientists. His most influential sources included the seminal works on consciousness by the Nobel Prize winning Dr. Gerald Edelman, and the controversial discoveries of Dr. Benjamin Libet concerning free will. 71

The authors exercises, which he began developing 40 years ago, continue to evolve; and for several years he has taught them to other people who find them effective. In the 40 years the author has practiced his exercises, they have never failed him! Furthermore, although its only anecdotal evidence, he believes he has cured himself of five of the diseases listed above that he associates with brain atrophy, and prevented several more. Probably no one can claim this rate of success for any currently available brain/body exercises, whether they include religious prayer, transcendental meditation, other forms of yoga, or similar mind/body control exercises. The Right Choice will explain why these more traditional forms of mental exercises are no longer appropriate (most were invented during autocratic regimes and could not have been promulgated unless they guaranteed that devoted practitioners would always render unto Caesar that which is Caesars). In a democracy (where the right choice is collectively made), the People rule rather than divinely appointed monarchs. Therefore, supernaturally based disciplines will not benefit the skeptical. Furthermore, master-servant disciplines (created by doctors, authors, gurus, personal trainers, nutritionists, aerobics instructors, et al.) are also useless in developing the self-discipline that one can only promote through controlled neurogenesis. The Right Choice will show how, in the end, no one can do it for you! You must learn to trust your intuition. However, you cant develop your intuition unless you practice some form of exercise that controls neurogenesis. Right now, no one else preaches this message. The Right Choice will show people how to do it. Thus it will show them how to live healthier longer, stay thinner, and cure or avoid the addictions and diseases that plague middle age. Above all, the book will show how free will, willpower, and self-discipline really work (or really dont work); and what people can do about it. Thus, The Right Choice will be the first self-improvement book that can really help someone, finally, totally, and permanently! Many people who reach middle age put their hearts at risk by failing to control their weight (as well as their drinking, which affects their eating habits). They dont exercise hard or regularly enough to be able to lose weight and keep it off. Moreover, they dont know how to deal with stress. Therefore, when people have heart attacks, their cardiologists typically urge them to change their lifestyle. This general bit of advice usually translates into separate programs to lose weight, medicate, meditate, practice stress-reducing exercises, and buy and use a treadmill or a stationary bicycle. Such extensive changes in life habits are not only difficult, inconvenient, time-consuming, and expensive; for many people, they are impossible. These people have become so used to making wrong choices for so long, that those wrong choices have become deeply engraved in their brains. Thus, change has become literally unthink72

able. They typically express their difficulties by saying, I dont have the willpower to change! Diet books, meditation and yoga instruction books, and exercise plans that dont address the central issue of willpower ultimately fail their readers. The Right Choice shows how revolutionary scientific discoveries concerning neurogenesis (the constant replacing of new brain cells), can help people to retrain their brains in order to make healthier choices. It proves, thereby, that people can changebut only if they know how. Moreover, it shows how many self-help programs actually diminish willpower by attempting to replace it with a dependency on concepts proposed by experts who promote self-serving selfhelp programs. The book offers an inclusive agenda that helps people lose weight and never gain it back; that helps them control stress (particularly when it cannot or should not be eliminated); and that motivates hard exerciseunder the theory that mild exercise, although better than nothing when measuring its effect on longevity, is useless for weight control. Thus people who have weight problems; people who want to know how to take control of their life every morning (the best way to avoid the worst effects of stress); and people who want to look forward more to their half hour of daily hard exercise than to a day off should read this book. Patients of cardiologists, particularly, should practice its suggestions, for those people are most in need of an all-inclusive program to improve health. The programs the book offers are free. You dont have to buy special or expensive foods or a single dietary supplement; you dont have to join a health club or buy special equipment; you dont have to contribute money to an ashram to train in Westernized (and often incorrectly understood) Hindu religious practices; and you dont have to deny yourself food, starve yourself, or go hungry again. Following the suggestions of The Right Choice, you create your own menus based on the foods you love most; you create your own exercise plan based on nothing more than common sense; and you create your own contemplative exercise, with hints from the book that are based on the principles of controlled neurogenesis. For many people who have constantly tried and failed to help themselves, reading and paying attention to The Right Choice will be the best decision they ever made. December 1999

Yoga
Yoga, which goes back 5,000 years, simply means yoke. 73

Since some of the origins of the English language originated in the Indo-European area, you can be sure that its no coincidence that the words yoga and yoke are similar. In classical yoga (called here samnyasam yoga, meaning yoga of renunciation), the spinal column presents a channel up which energy can be made to travel from the base of the spine to the crown of the head (and, supposedly, even beyond the limits of the body). This energy is called kundalini (kunda means to spiral), and it is sometimes thought of as a coiled serpent ready to spring to action. In classical yoga practice, as kundalini energy rises up the spinal cord, it is thought to express itself through other channel networks called chakras. These channels are associated with various nerve centers, the primary example being the nerve ganglia related to the solar plexus. Some of the practices of samnyasam yoga attempt to open up the channels associated with kundalini energy, as these channels are considered to be knotted until released through physical and psychic yoga practices. The opening of these channels is thought to foster physical well being or healing as well as spiritual enlightenment and freedom from the self-centered and alienated ego. There are at least two different and controversial approaches to awakening kundalini. The more vigorous approach, which is variously called Kundalini Mahayoga (meaning kundalini great yoga), Siddha Mahayoga (meaning perfected person Mahayoga), or Sahaja Yoga (meaning spontaneous yoga), requires a guru to initiate a devotee by means of giving shaktipat (meaning guiding the devotees descent of the shakti, or the kundalini energy). The less vigorous approach, which is considered to be radically different from the first, simply uses yoga techniques (such as chanting or selfless service) to produce various unspecific benefits (that is, people tend to feel better after practicing themsometimes to such a degree that for some people yoga practices can become addictive). These techniques include Hatha Yoga, Kriya Yoga, Laya Yoga, and Mantra Yoga. (The last of these examples includes Transcendental Meditation). For some individuals adept at practicing Kundalini Yoga, the less vigorous study of yoga techniques is considered a clumsy mockery of the subtle activity of kundalini. In any event, the more vigorous practice of giving shaktipat is considered a serious business and a science. One celebrated swami (Shivom Tirth) warns that an improperly practiced shaktipat initiation can be dangerous both to the disciple and to the guru. Some unstable individuals have suffered severe mental breakdowns after receiving shaktipat. For these reasons, kundalini instruction usually insists on a hierarchical system of knowledge to be passed from generation to generation. Sometimes only one person in a generation receives initiation during a particular teaching line. These days, however, anyone who has the money to pay a guru can find one somewhere who will give instruction. The ubiquitous availability of this highly esoteric and even dangerous knowledge, especially in the West, is the cause, at 74

least according to one writer, why some people who have received shaktipat from celebrated gurus have apparently only manifested greater neuroses and unhappiness in their lives as a result. The process of awakening kundalini is not a mysterious talent available only to those initiated by an expert teacher. Actually, the stimulation of the chakras (at least in an undifferentiated way) can be practiced by anyone who has the knack. However, like rolling the tongue or wiggling the ears some people can never figure out how to do it, probably for reasons having to do with their parents genes. In any case, if you have ever relaxed and extended the nervous channels around the area of the solar plexus by means of a strange muscular effort around the chest and belly that leads to a not unpleasantbut remarkably powerful and even frighteningsensation of energy radiating into the body, then you know exactly what this phenomenon is and how to practice iteven if it never occurred to you that such a talent is what some experts spend years to practice and teach. The question of whether practicing this talent has healthy spiritual and/or corporeal benefits is best left to the instructors who devote their life to awakening kundalini in themselves and their students. So is the question best left to experts of whether the sensations of awakened kundalini can be differentiated into many chakras, or whether the imagination of yoga practitioners goes into overtime under the influence of a guru. It was not unusual for various ancient religious systems to identify parts or sections of the body as being sources of special physical or spiritual powers or energy. The Jews, for example, identified a bony portion of the spine as a part of the body that could never be destroyed and that would survive to become the basis of everyones reincarnated body in Paradise. The Chinese identified portions of the body (such as areas of the foot) that were supposedly able to influence bodily organs associated with them. In addition, of course, the Hindus identified the spinal cord as a channel for divine energy. Whereas both acupuncture and yoga are based on the idea of being able to influence energy centers for healthful purposes, the practitioner of Acting Well does not seek to energize special powers by concentrating on areas of the body. Rather, the practitioners effort seeks to absorb powers from the environment and reflect them back into the environment, productively, in order to influence the world for the better. By focusing on the environment in order to divert attention away from the self, Acting Well is the opposite of samnyasam yoga, which withdraws all attention and spiritual manipulation away from the environment in order to focus always on the self. As the Bhagavad Gita puts it, The practitioner of [samnyasam yoga] should always focus on his Supreme Self, living alone in a hidden place, always controlling his mind, and free from desire and possessiveness. Whereas the point of samnyasam yoga is to perfect talents 75

within the body to renounce the ego (samnyasam means renunciation) in order better to realize a spiritual force within the psyche, Acting Well seeks to achieve the opposite effect. It abandons the seat of the psyche (that is, the internal reception area where all the products of the senses are gathered, vetted, and abandoned or passed on to consciousness) in order to attend to immediate sensations. These sensations are made up of whatever happens to impinge itself on the senses at the time, whether through memory or through the actual sounds and experiences of the city, the countryside, the atmosphere, the skin, sensations from the body cavity, etc. In a sense, the practitioner of Acting Well leaves the self and enters the world; whereas the student of samnyasam yoga leaves the world to concentrate on the self. Understanding the different origins of samnyasam yoga and Acting Well helps explain why they are so different. Samnyasam yoga was an approved system by the autocratic power structure of the Indo-European culture where a single maharaja (supported by the priesthood) owned virtually all the gold and all the women. Within such stratified regimes, samnyasam yoga was a perfect doctrine with which to keep the common folk in line. It is a fact that the only notable revolution in India (the one that expelled the British in 1947) prided itself in being non-violent. This bloodless takeover was marred, of course, by the subsequent conflict between Muslims and Hindus and Ghandis assassination, which would probably not have occurred if Muslims had originated out of the same non-violent tradition that Hindus did. In a sense, all Americans are maharajas! What sense, then, does it make to advise them to renounce all interest in worldly possessions and pleasures when they live in a community that obliges men and women to acquire more goods and services for their families than ancient kings could ever dream of, or be called irresponsible? Renunciation costs a poor man nothing and may lead him toward spiritual enlightenment. However, in a privileged land, renunciation as the road to salvation can lead to frustration, hypocrisy, and a citizenry who, with all their treasures, still manifest neuroses and unhappiness. Lacking the right daily psychic and physical practices, many Americans, with all their exotic foods and chic clothes, tend to regress into sedentary lifestyles. These weakened individuals lack the willpower needed to establish the diet, exercise, and stress-reducing habits that are known to be essential for physical and psychic health and happiness past middle age. Thats why Acting Well is an ideal system, and perhaps the only one, for privileged people to turn their wealth, power, and opportunity into love, health, and happiness. To summarize: Renunciation yoga (the form almost universally practiced in the West) came about mainly for political reasons. Although it is a powerful system that has led many disenfranchised people to moral and psychic salvation, it is inappropriate for privileged Westerners who 76

use it primarily to feel better and secondarily for unproven healing purposes. Although Western samnyasam yoga practitioners often feel better after folding themselves into their positions or falling into trances, if they contribute anything to the community, if they create wonderful things, or if they can call up sufficient willpower to improve their brains, bodies, and lives by transforming their lifestyles, it isnt because they practice samnyasam yoga. For these privileged people, Acting Well is a better choice.

Preventive Medicine
The healthiest way to take care of ourselves is to take responsibility for doing the best we can for our body and brain. Doctors take that responsibility away from us when we get sick. For a brief time they treat us as our parents would: they watch over us, tell us what to do, scold us for not doing it, and sometimes even send us to bed or to an institution! Usually, when were ailing, medical attention is comforting and necessary. However, sometimes its inappropriate to be treated like a child, especially when were well and hoping to avoid becoming sick. Thus, preventive medicine that patronizes patients does the opposite of what it should. Instead of liberating and helping us mature, it tries to restrict us and keep us dependent, like infants. For example: The best thing to do for a child who needs to lose weight is to put the child on a diet, supervise the menu, regulate the eating time, forbid in-between snacks, and so on. A parent must enforce these rules through punishment if necessary. However, the best thing for me, whether I weigh too much, too little, or just enough, is to create a permanent daily menu for myself out of all possible foods I really like. I must be responsible for the menus nutritional balance and excellence, and resist the inevitable efforts with which my family or friends will try to persuade me to ignore my menu while eating out, eating with family, or being entertained. Over time, the scale will tell me how close I am to my ideal weight. If my weekly menu varies no more than 5%, I can trust the scale measurements to tell me if I should add or subtract a course or two from my menu in order, eventually, to achieve an ongoing perfection. This regimen is too liberating and mature for a small child. It requires such a high respect for scientific method that it may provoke contempt for all the cookbook writers and diet doctors who want me to pay them for their fashionable ideas, drugs, and useless advice. One can draw similar illustrations for physical and psychological regimens: Exercise, by definition, is a form of simple, repetitive activity. As such, exercises are suitable to teach and supervise children (although some children play so much they dont need supervised exercise). 77

I can keep my body in good condition through regular exercise, but only if I do it regularly! Since most exercises are boring, Im likely to abandon a new regimen after a while. Thus, it would be better for me to find an activity analogous to what children do for which I take daily responsibility to maintain a reasonable level of skill. Speed swimming, cycling, and fast dancing, are suitable candidates providing they are convenient and can be practiced as if they were performances (the way children play pretend games that other people can watch). The difference between exercise and performance is often illustrated by results. Men who work on abs and pecs in health clubs tend to ignore their back muscles. They develop strange postures. Men who work as laborers, on the other hand, regularly lift heavy things, develop their torsos more evenly, and walk more gracefully. A wonderful car without a road to drive on will never perform properly. Thus, spinning the wheels of a simple exercise bicycle can never provide the motivation that biking around Central Park offers every New Yorker. (Adding bells and whistles to exercise bicycles, however, can usually increase motivation to a useful level.) One technique that automatically gets people to perform is competition. However, competition is too difficult to arrange on a daily or semi-daily basis to be a useful conditioneralthough the possibility of athletic competition (an annual marathon, for example) does help motivate regular practice for many people. Nevertheless, a performing-for-oneself-in-public strategy is better than a competition because its available every day, as long as the body can function. It can also adjust to declining strength without disheartening the practitioner. Psychological exercises that stress repetitive activities are an example of patronizing conditioning. Self-hypnosis techniques (such as Couism), repeating mantras using Hindu rosary beads (called making japam), and many forms of meditation are psychological exercises that may work spiritually. However, if I do such exercises for preventive medical reasons they will condition my brain to blank out thought (actually to make me more responsive to a teacher, trainer, or guru Many such Eastern practices were developed by collaborators of absolute monarchs, and thus were part of a political strategy). Such exercises assume that an unclean mind needs purification, or that a child has nothing worthy to think about and needs to have spiritual thoughts implanted. Thus, doctors who recommend repetitive meditation (or relaxation) exercises to reduce stress may reinforce their patients immaturity rather than their strength. Many doctors feel it is their solemn duty to be parent-surrogates. They assume they are being paid to do play that role. Indeed, when a patient is sick, it is absolutely appropriate for a doctor to take charge of the patient as any parent would a child, and offer all the affection and tender loving care the patient needs for as long as necessary. However, for issues of preventive medicine, such solicitation is not appropriate. If you treat a muscle sprain with rest, it doesnt fol78

low that you should pamper strong muscles as well. Good health, being priceless, is not an economic issue; and doctors should not feel the need to infanticize healthy patients. This medical economic issue (which, over time, may change due to the psychological effects of managed care systems on health) is partially responsible for the poor state of preventive medicine, which is expressed in proliferating diet, exercise, and psychological self-help books, tapes, and equipment. These products sometimes descend beyond patronizing to the level of superstitious grandparents embroidering ancient folklore. Unhappily, such inventions sell in the millions! Patronizing harms preventive medicine. However, doctors who liberate their patients through information and respect for scientific method make them more mature and better able to share knowledge with others about conditioning for health. This system of transference of knowledge is how doctors become doctors: they teach each other. Patients dont necessarily require specifics about how to cure sickness; but they do need general information about how to stay well. The best way to obtain, absorb, solidify, test, use, prove, and approve any knowledge is to discover it yourself and share it with others. In the field of preventive medicine, the Alcoholics Anonymous organization has used this form of positive, sharing therapy for decades, andfor many peopleit works! Sharing can be done in support groups (such as Weight Watchers or AA), which can be small or large. It can also be done, nowadays, on the Internet (as AA has discovered): instantaneous, anonymous, and daily. Human contact, however, is best. Many support groups bolster courage and empowerment over patronizing doctors. Its unfortunate that most people wait until theyre physically or mentally ill (and therefore often terrified) before they join a support group. Much medical knowledge is a matter of wisdom: of trying things out, watchful waiting, seeing what works, measuring things, keeping accurate records because you cant trust your memory, trying new ideas when old ones fail, and above all, letting naturethe true healertake its course. This groping in the dark is characteristic of the best medical minds. It reveals humility in the face of enervating ignorance that challenges every generation. The most valuable thing a doctor can do for a healthy patient is to become a partner in good health: to become a student, as much as a doctor, teacher, or surrogate parent. The most valuable lesson a doctor can share with any patient, sick or well, is the patients need for vigilance: the need to keep and value records, to observe what works and doesnt, to experiment, to keep actively interested, to be sensible (which means, among other things, to be sensitive), and to care. That means, to care for ones body, ones brain, and each other. When were young, we depend on youth and luck to renew our 79

energy and forgive the indiscretions and bad habits that compromise our health. The more we age, the more these dependencies begin to fail. Sensible care (which is the best preventive medicine) is any system that conditions a persons body and brain to become free of dependencies. It spends a reasonable part of every day seeking to create a new life: a system of renewal that includes nutritional, physical, and psychological conditioning, as well as how one interacts with the world through clothing, posture, grooming, and so on. The older we get, the more renewal we need. There are no rules or restrictions, and no time out. Life is not a game. However, if we live it sensibly, caringly, and well, we can perform and enjoy life more as a pleasurable diversion than fear it as a period of unavoidable decline. April 1997

Uncommon Sense
Science is currently producing a great deal of theoretical knowledge that defies common sense. The physics of black holes, for example, defies belief, not just common sense. Big bangers argue that before time began, the Universe was a point that blew up into the Universe. Moreover, Julian Barbours book, The End of Time, argues that time itself never existed. Many ideas that everyone accepts these days once seemed unreasonable at first. Centuries ago, for example, it was obvious that the world was flat, and that the Earth circled the Sun. Nowadays, we can at least imagine the truth, even though it runs contrary to our visual and kinesthetic senses. Other newly minted theories of physics are virtually impossible to visualize. The non-existence of time is one of them. The idea isnt entirely preposterous. When you think about it, ask yourself, Where is the past? Where is the future? Neither the past nor the future is currently available for observation, measurement, or scrutiny. Therefore, its obvious that both past and future do not exist (at this moment). All there ever is, at any moment you observe it, is a now. Since time is a measurement of duration, it requires both past and future to be measured. First, however, you cant measure time directly; and second, in order to have time you must be able to measure duration; and you cant measure duration without referring to time. Theres even a question about the concept of now. For now implies existence. Whatever is, is now. However, is there such a thing as existence? Again, you cant measure existence. You can only assume it. Like our ancestors who assumed the world was flat, you could be wrong. The real problem is that words like existence and time are 80

memes, or cultural ideas that caught on and survived through many generations because of their extreme usefulness. What would we do without clocks (which is a meme), or without the verb to be? (An exception to the assumption behind existence that proves the rule is that, in the Russian and Hebrew languages, you cant say, I am. You can only say I. The am is understood. The underlying concept, that existence is a figment of imagination, is therefore implied.) Memes represent memories formed from neural keystrings that you were ready to believe in even before you became aware of what the memory was (because a neural keystring that locates a memory forms before the event occurs that causes the memory). Actors are especially sensitive to the paradoxical problems surrounding the verb to be. For example, actors are commonly instructed to disregard being type concepts. Character must be defined in terms of actions (that is, verbs and adverbs, to be denoted by placing the word to before a description of the action), not states of being (that is, nouns and adjectives). Tell me what you do, and I will tell you who you are, Herbert Berghof used to tell his acting students. It doesnt help an actor to know that Hamlet begins the play mourning his father. To mourn has to be played through actions: the more unusual, poetic, and dramatic, the better the playwright. Thus, Shakespeare gives Hamlet the following list of actions in his opening speech: Tis not alone my inky cloak [To wear black]... Nor windy suspiration of forced breath [To sigh], No, nor the fruitful river in the eye [To cry], Nor the dejected havior of the visage [To grimace]... That can denote me truly [To expose my feelings].... They are actions that a man might play [To pretend grief]: But I have that within which passeth show [To reveal my inner grief]; These but the trappings and the suits of woe [To disparage custom]. A less talented playwright might have relied more on exposition, where one character talks about another. Best is when an actor creates subtle, new actions to convey aspects of character a playwright may never have considered. In any event, an actor cant write letters to the audience! The audience must infer the characters qualities solely from the actions it perceives, not the words. While youre Acting Well, youll probably encounter several new concepts that defy common sense. For example, it seems obvious that anyone would be more likely to exercise three times a week than daily. Who can afford to take time out of every day, seven times a week, going back and forth to the health club; or run a mile or two after every workday and on weekends? A three-times-a-week regimen seems more like common sense. 81

It happens to be wrong. The truth is that if you exercise only a few days a week, then every other day (and twice on weekends!), youll constantly be breaking the good habits that would otherwise be forming. Eventually youll start looking forward to days off. No one can form good habits under these circumstances! Eventually, the game is up. Viewed in this more accurate light, what seems like common sense can begin to look foolish; and what seems to defy common sense can begin to look practical. Another way to look at on-again, off-again schedules for fitness is to consider the fact that you can literally drive an animal crazy through inconsistent training. When Pavlov trained his dogs to salivate at the ringing of a bell, he didnt give them meat one time he rang the bell and withhold meat the next time. He gave them meat every time he rang the bell until the new habit was fully formed. Only then could he discontinue feeding the dog when the bell rang and still observe the dog salivating. If you associate the ringing of a bell with the shocking of a rat, youll eventually train the rat to cower at the ringing of a bell. However, if you associate a shock with a bell randomly, youll drive the rat insane. Thus, consistency is an essential part of forming healthy habits. Another belief that seems like common sense is the idea that people have willpower. It seems obvious that if I lift my finger, I have willed my finger to rise. If I dont lift my finger, it seems like common sense to say that I didnt will my finger to rise. The truth is subtler. Years ago, the neuroscientist Benjamin Libet conducted tests on patients who were being treated with invasive procedures (for example, lobotomy) that scientists are no longer permitted to perform, fortunately. (Thus Libets experiments can no longer be repeated unfortunately.) During the course of these experiments, Libet proved that the will to raise your finger occurs 10 milliseconds after your finger is raised. (These experiments are reported in further detail and confirmed by several distinguished writers on the subject of consciousness; for example, Daniel Dennett and Stephen Pinker.) Whatever it is that motivates your finger to rise, the reason is unconscious. (It may be as simple as a random impulse.) However, once your finger rises, your conscious brain concocts a rationalization to explain why you raised your finger. That rationalization takes the form, Well, my finger moved up. I must have moved it. Therefore, I willed it to move! It doesnt matter that your assertion is false. You can be forgiven for lying to yourself because the period (10 milliseconds) is so short, who would know? Secondly, youd be very upset if you couldnt explain to yourself why you raised your own finger! even though human beings constantly do things they habitually do without 82

thinking or willing their actions. (How often do you decide to wash your face?) If ever there was a scientific finding that defies common sense, Libets discovery takes the cake! His assertion, however, happens to be true; and his resulting challenge to such commonly accepted ideas (and even religious convictions) as free will and willpower is a theoretical basis behind Acting Well. The implications of Libets scientifically uncommon sense include the idea that if youre overweight it isnt because you dont have willpower. Its entirely because you havent formed the right habits to protect your body from overeating. An important consequence of that idea is that being overweight should never become a moral issue. Not only cant you help yourself from being overweight; but, more importantly, you can remedy the situation through a relatively easy process (that is, Acting Well) if you just get over other peoples common sense approach to the problem. Morality has nothing to do with it. Therefore, stop beating yourself up for being too fat! Just prepare yourself every day for each days performance, following a few simple suggestions. Your revised daily routines may defy other peoples common sense, but theyll work for you as reliably as rehearsals do for actors who have to repeat the same, identical actions during every evening for the run of a play. Let other people be common sensible. You just lose the weight, and concern yourself with Acting Well.

Acting vs. Impersonation

After Carlotta (not her real name) was taught the rudiments of Acting Well, she asked, When do I get my script? Carlotta, who was a fine musician, believed that if she was going to act, not as a musician, and off the concert stage, she needed to be coached or told what she was supposed to do and what she was supposed to say. She figured that Acting Well was a kind of Life Theatre that helped people like her to lose weight. (She weighed at least 50 pounds too much at the time.) Carlotta further suggested engaging the services of her friend Clarice, who was younger and more attractive than she was. Clarice had lost a considerable amount of weight some years before. Carlotta promised that, if necessary, Clarice would claim to have been on the Acting Well diet for ten years, thereby delivering a compelling and credible (albeit dishonest!) testimonial. Both of these reactions reflected the same misconception. Carlotta didnt understand the difference between acting and impersonation. Carlottas mistake wasnt just confined to Acting Well. For example, when it was suggested that Acting Well could help her create a 83

confident character when she simply walked down the street, Carlotta said, I dont care about projecting any kind of character when I walk down the street! I never dress up when I go out to the grocery store. I look my worst, and I couldnt care less who sees me or what they think! They could all die, for all I care! From such a violent response, one could rightly suspect that underneath Carlottas air of indifference toward the public lay a deep hostility toward the world in general; and toward her former husband in particular, who had abandoned his family, thereby forcing Carlotta to fend for herself professionally in a mans world. Most women Carlottas age were raised to expect to depend on a man to take care of them. Thus, they respond more frequently to self-help books and trainers who act as puppetmasters on whom they can depend. It rarely occurs to them to blame their coaches, therefore, when they fail on self-help programs time after time. Not only are these women used to feeling inferior to a coach, but many coaches deliver messages in a condescending way that convinces the reader, Youve been wrong most of your life! Therefore, if you cant execute my instructions, its your fault not mine! Thus, like many people, Carlotta assumed that as an actress she would be helped by a director (or coach) to dress up and pretend to be someone other than who she was. She figured that her basic self would remain intact, inviolate, invisible, unique, and private. But she thought it might be useful to create a character over and above herself who could learn how to lose weight and keep it off. Thus, what Carlotta wanted to learn was how to impersonate the thin woman she wanted to be, not act her. She really wanted a charm school, or a personality makeover, not a technique that required her to change the depths of her being. Thus, she wasnt prepared to do the work required. She wanted it to be done for her, for example, through a script or a director. The major contribution Stanislavski made to the world of the theatre was to caution actors not to confuse skilled impersonation with skilled acting. In his day, actors like Sarah Bernhardt became famous through acting methods that were more like impersonation than acting. Other actors, on the other hand, such as Eleanora Duse, perfected the art of acting through inner techniques that created characters that conveyed a more eloquent sense of truth (or honesty). People over 50 have often been entertained by skilled impersonators pretending to be Cary Grant or Bette Davis. These impersonators could be considered talented actors (or, more accurately, comedians); but they were obviously doing something very different from what the real Cary Grant or Bette Davis did. Real acting imparts a sense of honesty that impersonations cant possibly convey. When Roy Scheider says (in The Magic Bullet videotape), If Im not honest with you right here and right now, its not going to sound very good, because the camera doesnt lie, hes talking about acting, not impersonation. The implications to the viewer are far more credi84

ble than a formerly fat woman lying to the public that Acting Well made her thin! All that Carlottas friend Clarice could have done for Acting Well would have been to impersonate the kind of actress who gives testimonials on infomercials. Who would believe her? How could Acting Well, which is about honesty, include a dishonest testimonial in its marketing? Nevertheless, the basic flaw in Carlottas understanding went deeper, and mirrored her flawed understanding about who we really are. The problem was that Carlotta thought she had a self. For her it may have been a secret and private self; but she believed her self was always there, whether or not she, or anyone else, was aware of it. The truth is that when Carlotta isnt conscious, she has no self! All she has, generally, is a bundle of semi-conscious habits accompanied by momentary observances of what shes doing that echo in her brain for about three seconds and disappear. The only reason she can walk down the street not caring how she looks is that she allows herself to become semi-conscious when she does it. In this way she muffles and suppresses her self, which is already afflicted by neglect and the resulting low self-esteem. Consciousness is self, and self is consciousness. Both are illusory in the sense that you cant pin them down, measure them, or point them out. Theyre inferred, and theyre always together. Thats about all you can say, definitively, about those two subjects (or about such related concepts as real self, soul, spirit, etc.). What an actor does is to create a self to play. That self is called the character. When the character is brought to life honestly, through techniques that exercise the actors imagination, the actor replaces his or her self with the characters, and the audience believes what happens. What most people dont realize is that when theyre not conscious of their character (which means not being conscious of their actions), they have no self. That idea sounds spooky; but nowhere will you find something called self when an individual who owns it isnt aware of it. What Acting Well does is to teach people techniques to create a character of which they can be conscious. If that character comprises a self that complies to what they want themselves to do and believe they should be doing, then they can be proud of who they are. They can walk down the street conscious of themselves and their neighbors. They can feel theyre a vital part of a vital community. They can feel happy to be alive! Carlotta finally began to understand the concept of Acting Well when she related it to her musicianship. She understood that if a pianist plays Bach, the music would sound quite different from how it sounds playing Beethoven. The gestures of the pianist may also look different according to the composer. Similarly, an actor will take on different personas depending on the material the playwright creates. 85

A pianist who performs either Bach or Beethoven in the style of, say, Glenn Gould, or some other idol or teacher, will never reach the heights of a Glenn Gould; for although imitation can produce remarkable results, unless a pianist can interpret music honestly, an imitative performance will never rise above the level of a skilled impersonation. The same goes for acting, whether on the stage or in life. If you pretend to be sophisticated, youll come across as pretentious. However, if you do sophisticated things in an honest fashion (which generally means doing the best you can), youll come across as...sophisticatedbecause you are sophisticated! At last, Carlotta had to face the question, Is a pianist a pianist when shes not playing the piano? The answer, by convention, is yes. In reality, the answer is obviously no. Another way to ask that question is Am I myself when Im asleep? The answer, again by convention (that is, according to the way we use the English language), is yes. In reality, however, when youre asleep, your body only represents your self. Since your brain, which is the seat of your consciousness, is asleep, the rest of you is asleep as well. You (that is, your character or personality) are nowhere to be found! Thus Acting Well, by creating your character, can bring your self alive and make it conscious in a way more real than any reality to which you (or it) has previously been accustomed.

Comprosoft
(Compliance Program Software Company) Business Plan (Excerpts) Heart attacks, heart failure, and strokes kill more people and drain more money from national economies than any other disease, making cardiovascular disease the most serious health problem in the world. A number of dietary, exercise, and stress reduction practices can lower the risk of dying from heart disease by 20%-25%. Yet few of the worlds susceptible population heeds the well-publicized, good medical advice they know perfectly well they ought to follow. For example, according to the American Heart Association, only 15% of all post-infarction candidates enter rehabilitation programs. Of those who do, less than 50% to adhere to healthier practices after four years. The primary reason for such low participation rates, according to the AHA, is lack of physician referral. COMPROSOFTs business plan aims to sell exclusive services that will raise low compliance ratios to substantially higher fractions 86

worldwide. These innovative services are composed of integrated techniques relating to diet, exercise, and stress reduction. The techniques are simple and designed to be enjoyable. Some have been in development for decades. Several integrated delivery systems will bring these techniques to market. These systems include professional health services, custom designed software for small personal computers, cellular telephones, radio and television infomercials, the Internet, e-commerce, and printed literature. COMPROSOFTs ultimate plan is to franchise its services to rehabilitative and preventive cardiology centers around the world primarily through patient referral. There are many diet and health programs available through hospitals, clinics, and privately held companies. These programs are often too expensive (costing as much as $12,000) to qualify for health insurance reimbursement. Therefore, only a small percentage of people who need these services take advantage of opportunities to acquire them. However, even for wealthy patients, who can afford to spend a month at a rehabilitation center, these programs produce relatively low compliance ratios. Therefore, cardiologists dont usually recommend them. Thus, for example, blood pressure, stress, and cholesterol problems are mainly treated with medications instead of exercise which has been shown to be the preferred therapy for these conditions in almost every case. Programs available that would compete with COMPROSOFT for heart patient referrals would be diet plans (such as the Pritikin and Ornish methods), exercise venues (such as health clubs), and privately taught Hindu meditation classes (available at spas and yoga centers). Occasionally all three services (plus smoking cessation programs) are available at hospital or university rehabilitation centers. Compliance is the main factor affecting results in all these programs. Psychologists occasionally address the problem of compliance by publishing such pointers on how to stay on a diet as chewing food slowly and always sitting in the same position while eating. However, these behavioral tips have no effect on exercise compliance, for example, which is infinitely more important to maintaining weight loss than practicing dietary trickery. To date no one has offered an integrated service plan with a single, effective compliance method. COMPROSOFT has developed such a method and seeks to market it widely. The main problem people have with preventive cardiology programs is that they find it difficult if not impossible to maintain enthusiastic compliance to health enhancement programs after an initial burst of success. Thus, although they may lose nine pounds in three weeks at a rehabilitation center, they may gain all the weight back (and often more) over the next six months. They may stop smoking for three weeks but more than half will start smoking again within the year. And although they may enjoy practicing yoga exercises for sev87

eral years, they may eventually find the practice unrewarding or find it too difficult to continue taking time out of each day for themselves. These willpower problems are common to the human condition, and theres not a single person who has ever lived who hasnt suffered from them. COMPROSOFT addresses the willpower problem by denying it exists. When a person with a tendency toward obesity succeeds in maintaining ideal weight for 20 years or more, its not done through brute force but through other means. COMPROSOFT provides those alternative means, and no other program does. The concept behind COMPROSOFT is the idea that the main problem of trying to regulate behavior is exactly the same problem as an actor faces that must recreate the behavior of a character onstage. Such an effort cant be done through self-discipline; but it can be done easily through the stealth of various acting techniques. In other words, the best pathway to wellness is to learn how to act well. Therefore, in their initial compliance phases, COMPROSOFT clients will attend interactive seminars that are similar to acting classes. These classes will teach clients how to practice good health habits that involve eating, as well as physical and contemplative exercises. After a while the clients will become seasoned actors adept at recreating their particular character for each days performance. The objective of these characters will be the same: to be a major player upon the stage of life. Since the clients job is only to recreate one character consistently (who is very much like themselves), they do not require Lawrence Oliviers talent to refashion many fictional characters personalities at will. In fact, acting talent is unnecessary to master Acting Well. Once the clients character actions are defined, compliance to stage directions involving diet, exercise, and stress reduction methods will become second nature: easy, and pleasurable to do. These methods may involve a variety of different approaches that arent necessarily new. However, the focus on compliance (rather than methods), and the programs and software that make the Acting Well approach possible, are sales opportunities unique to COMPROSOFT. Once cardiologists and primary care physicians become acquainted with COMPROSOFTs compliance ratio success, they will be much more likely to refer their patients to its service centers. These referrals will be the primary source of COMPROSOFTs profitability. Ancillary profitability will become available through clients lifelong use of COMPROSOFTs website reporting facility and feedback opportunities (yielding approximately $20 per month per client) as well as food delivery services managed in conjunction with new business-to-business website catering services. Two or three times per week, these services will prepare and home-deliver 20 approved meals per week for clients who want (and can afford) to participate; plus offer one deluxe (non-dietetic) meal per week in an upscale fine 88

restaurant. The measure of COMPROSOFTs success will not only be profitability, but also how effectively the companys plan helps lower the rate of heart disease throughout the world. Thus, compliance ratios will be used to measure the companys effectiveness. Should clinical trials prove those ratios to be extraordinary (as they are expected to be), profitability is likely to be assured. The cost to a client for participating in a 4-week intense, and 8week follow-up program would be $5,200. COMPROSOFTs direct cost per client (not including overhead) would be $1,000. Direct costs would be distributed among an acting teacher, a physical trainer, a doctor (in most cases the clients own cardiologist), and a registered nurse. Average hourly fee would be $36 paid directly to each consultant, with most services lasting two hours. 5 other consultants would service each client, but these consultants would represent retail sales opportunities in food, clothing, computers, and home decoration and lighting. Rather than being cost centers, these consultants would contribute to COMPROSOFTs profitability through commissions on sales. Ancillary profits, however, have not been included in the 5-Year Profitability Goals. The risks of the business plan include the following: The cost of the program may be too high to attract clients or too low to pay all expenses including unanticipated start-up and subsequent operating expenses; the program may fail to attract enough participating cardiologists to provide sufficient referrals to make the operation profitable; the initial feasibility study and subsequent clinical trials may prove that the theoretical basis for COMPROSOFT is flawed, or that its program does not, in fact, promote compliance; the clients may not like the program once its in operation and may therefore generate damaging word of mouth. In order to address these issues, much more work will be done during the feasibility study to fine-tune the budget and operational plan. New York cardiologists will be acquainted with the opportunities the program offers to them to increase their patients compliance ratios. The feasibility studies and initial clinical trials will also test the theory behind COMPROSOFT in order to determine continuing compliance ratios before too much money is spent to activate the program. If clients arent satisfied with the program after 12 weeks, it will either be improved or abandoned. We hope you will give serious consideration to participating in this exciting and important new venture! April 2000

Morning Preparation
Doing Morning Preparation resembles certain forms of meditationbut with enormous differences. 89

Because of these differences, certain characteristics of the place where you meditate are inappropriate for doing Morning Preparation. Many people meditate while sitting in a special position on the floor (for example, in the lotus position). Doing Morning Preparation should only be performed while sitting at a desk. Any other choice for writing is impractical. (However, while on vacation, you may have to practice Morning Preparation in a bathroom or while sitting up in bed, or wherever you can be alone.) While doing Morning Preparation, you will write quite a lot. Youll use both hands and rest your elbows on the desk. Stay away from computers and typewriters. They take up too much room and make noise. Close your eyes when beginning Morning Preparation. The special desk or table should be used only for doing Morning Preparation so that it will be free of all extraneous papers or any materials not really necessary (such as photographs or pencil holders); and so that you can return to it every morning without having to clear things away or be reminded of problems to solve or busy work to accomplish. Having a cleared desk with the proper materials ready is the best way to defend yourself against relapses (that is, mornings in which you just dont feel like doing Morning Preparation). The urge to give into these relapses disappears after a while (except, for some, while on vacation, in which case you can give into them without penalty). If you do paper work at home, you should do it in another room. For example, if you have a small office in your dining room for working at home you should prepare a special area in your bedroom for doing Morning Preparation. The desk you use for doing Morning Preparation should be permanent, not something you have to rig up every morning. It should sit waiting and cleared for you to begin. (If you have to do too much to start, it will discourage you from starting.) Think of your room as a control room, and your desk as a control board in a television studio, responsible for both recording and enlightening the world outside. The time you spend in your studio should seem as costly as the time a network spends running a control room. Your logbook, one pen or pencil with eraser, a paperweight, a place marker, and a source of scent are all that need to be on the desk or table. If you use your bedroom to do Morning Preparation (we think its the best place!), there are some things you should do before you begin. Certainly: make your bed, leave nothing strewn about, turn on the lights, and open the curtains. Let the sun shine in! You should have as many sources of lights shining as practical. It would not be excessive, for example, to turn on track lighting from the ceiling, recessed lighting behind shelves, one or two table lamps, and a standing halogen lightall at the same timeespecially in the early winter morning, while its still dark outside and youre waiting 90

for the morning sun to shine in. Let the neighbors behind the windows across the street see how much earlier youre getting up these days! Multiple sources of lighting are better than one bright bulb. In the wintertime, the more light you have, the more your spirits will rise, especially if you suffer from any degree of seasonal affective disorder. If you live alone, its probably not difficult to have two desks in separate rooms. If you live with others, then you may have problems finding privacy to do Morning Preparation. Its crucially important that you solve these problems! Negotiate with your mates! Evangelize! Your sensitivity, reality, and the control of your life are at stake! Beginners who begin Morning Preparation first thing do better if they dont wait to start until after theyve eaten and read the newspaper, for example. Many systems have been tried, and you should never avoid experimentation; but the overall results so far indicate that the less one does before doing Morning Preparation the better. That means: no coffee or food before beginning. No need to shave or put on makeup. You should nevertheless beautify yourself in some way. In other words, you should pay tribute to the period by trying to look your best under the circumstances. However, if you take time out to shower first, shave, or put on makeup, boil coffee, and dress for the day, youll waste too much valuable time getting started. Any kind of wasted time tends to become habitual. Doing Morning Preparation consists of two parts: Steps & Landings and transcribing notes. These two processes are part of a psychic, cyclic respiratory process like inhalation and exhalation. You cant do both at the same time, any more than you can breathe in and out at the same time. In addition, you cant transcribe before you do Steps & Landings any more than you can exhale when you havent properly inhaled. You shouldnt do Morning Preparation more than once a day. Its a waste of time. You shouldnt mix doing Morning Preparation and working for money by trying to do Morning Preparation at the officeas some people who do meditation during work breaks do. Morning Preparation isnt really about reducing stress, although it may serve that function admirably. You should not do Morning Preparation at night or while reading or doing creative writing or art. Never wear pajamas or sleeping clothes to do Morning Preparation. Always dress for work in special clothes that are casual and comfortable (unless youre more comfortable dressing formally). These work clothes may be worn for other casual purposes as well. (In other words, you dont have to change clothes when you finish doing Morning Preparation.) You may want to replace this work costume every season with something different. Wearing a special scent in the morning to beautify yourself is helpful. Scent helps to wake the other senses to realities that float 91

your way. You should keep track of the exact times you spend doing Morning Preparation. Its a way of keeping score. Always keep a permanent record of each days time you begin and end doing Morning Preparation. Once youre settled, the preliminary part of doing Morning Preparation takes about 25-35 minutes. Then (at least for the first six months) youll write an essay that takes 15-25 minutes. You cant complete these processes in much shorter times; but they can take longer on some days. On days you practice Morning Preparation (especially when things go well), you may find yourself carried away with the idea of it. On those days, a special feeling of greater sensitivity to the world and to yourself may follow you throughout the day. Its a feeling you can neither command to appear nor refuse to feel. If you fail to do Morning Preparation on a particular day, you may realize, at some point (although chances are you wont!), that you dont have the feeling on that day; but you wont be able to get it back or identify exactly what it felt like when you had it. On the other hand, there may be times when the feeling comes by itself, inexplicably, unrelated to Morning Preparation. However, those times will be rare and you cant depend on them. When you do Morning Preparation, you can rely on the fact that at least once during the day (called pre-closure or World Walk) you will experience the feeling again, and can use that moment to prepare the following day. While experiencing such feelings, you may have the urge to share your experience with others. This urge is related to the religious service offered, for example, by artisans who decorated great cathedrals at the beginning of the Second Millennium. Those artists werent just hired workers who gilded halos over the images of saints. They designed and probably often executed their tasks with elevated consciousness. Thus, the images were able to inspire more than 50 generations of visitors. You should seek some similarly elevated service with which to share these essentially religious feelings lest they be wasted, as are sperm, when prevented from creating more life out of the moments of pleasure that accompanied them into the world. You may not have a cathedral to decorate, but you can surely find some task to express the attachment to life that breaking the day with Morning Preparation offers.

Your Treasure Chest

Supposing you wanted to teach a child to wash her face every morning and evening. Would you then throw dirt and ashes on her head a half-hour after she rinsed and wiped herself clean every day? Hardly! 92

Yet, consider how many people eat pretty much the same regular breakfast every morning; then shortly after they arrive at the office, begin to stuff themselves with sweet rolls, sugared and creamed coffee breaks, carbonated non-diet beverages, and whatever miscellaneous snacks strike their fancy throughout the day. Such practices are the equivalent of dirtying your face after you wash it. Whats the point in washing it if you soil it right away? Whats the point of establishing a regular breakfast with which you can maintain a constant healthy weight if you cancel its value every day with extra food? From the point of view of maintaining healthy weight, it would be better if you cut out breakfast and relied completely on snack food! (However, in that case, you would negate the nutritional values you normally get from breakfast.) If this analogy seems extreme to you, then youre almost certainly a victim of one of the Colossal Blunders that torment the world. You believe that eating has nothing to do with washing your face: that the two activities are entirely different forms of behavior with entirely different purposes. You fail to see how much alike they are: that eating the right foods in the right amounts can only be accomplished if your eating behaviors are habits not options. You wouldnt teach a child that washing her face is an option. You simply see to it that every morning and evening she washes her face! After a while, this required behavior becomes habitual. You can stop watching your child to see if she washes her face because you know for sure that shell do it. Optional behavior, on the other hand, can never become a habit. If it were always up to your child to wash her face, you would have to watch her all her life to make sure she did it. In other words, youd have to become her puppetmaster. The same principle applies to other habits, such as brushing teeth, going to the bathroom, making the bed, and performing chores. If these activities arent habitual, in most cases, your child wont do them at all. The same phenomenon is true of eating healthy. If its not a constant habit, you wont do it. You may pretend you do it; you may fool yourself into thinking youre doing it; but the truth is, youre not doing it. If youre reading this book, its almost certain that youre not eating healthy. If you were, you wouldnt need to read the book. Youd like to be eating healthy, but you dont know how. Youre a victim of a Colossal Blunder that many people make who believe that healthy eating should include novelty, variety, and above all, options. The very opposite is the case; and this Colossal Blunder is a particular evil. The correct thing to do while Acting Well, as it applies to food, is to create a neural column combination on which to hang your daily eating practices. Thats all you have to do, and you wont have further problems. Think of your meals as treasures locked in a chest that can only be opened by you, using a key thats only owned and available to you. 93

Three times a day, you open the chest and take out your breakfast, then your first lunch, and then your second lunch. On special occasions (but not regularly!), you might have a tidbit or two in addition. Once youve created and practiced a regular schedule long enough, youll never have a problem going to the chest, unlocking it, and eating and enjoying your food. However, if you snack all day long; or if you permit yourself to vary your menu according to whim, youll never create the key. Without the key, there can be no chestin which case youll become entirely dependent on people who either give you food or sell it to you. People who sell you food are generally not interested in your health or welfare. They just want to make money by getting you to gorge as much as you can on what they sell. Since they compete with other food purveyors, they want to make sure that whatever they sell you is as tasty and tempting as possible (otherwise the competition will take your business away from them). Thus, theyll tend to load their foods with unhealthy ingredients (mainly sugar and fat) that will make you gain weight and/or develop heart disease, adult-onset diabetes, etc. They want to share their treasure chests, which are bound to be more appealing than your own. Theres something different in them every day. Your diamonds and pearls may be fine; but selections of semi-precious stones in quality settings have a lot to be said for them! Like the purveyors of cigarettes, these merchants hope youll become addicted to their lethal products. Better for them that you die early and they make money, then for too many of you to ignore them and put them out of business. These food manufacturers use all sorts of wiles in order to trick you into trying their wares. They suggest, for example, that you owe it to yourself to exercise your inalienable right to sample every new thing that comes along because maybe youll love it! Theres nothing wrong with sampling things once in a while (like once a week); but when youre not just sampling, but eating things every day that you shouldnt eat, youre slowly destroying yourself while others make money by making you fat and sick. These purveyors encourage variety: eat other things, but eat our things too! Dont get into a habit of eating foods that dont include some of ours! If we cant get you every day, at least eat our stuff once a week. In other words, snack and indulge yourself. They may tell you to substitute healthy snacks for unhealthy snacks in their diabolical efforts to keep you eating. You must therefore understand that any snack is unhealthy because it prevents you from forging a neural column combination. These diabolical food purveyors have taken over the food recommendations of the United States government to such a degree that if youre foolish enough to try to follow the U.S. Department of Agricultures food pyramid scheme, youll almost certainly gain massive amounts of excess weight. 94

Your only protection against these evil forces is what you put in your own food chest and the column combination you retain in your brain to open and use it every day. If you complicate your life with snacks and varieties of goodies, you will destroy your chances of ever creating a column combination that regulates your intake of food. Therefore, you must resist anyones advice (particularly any professional nutritionist who wants to be your puppetmaster) that insists (among many other things) that you need variety (so that you can make sure you get all the nutrients you need); that you should eat a balanced dinner (they cant give a good reason for that idea); that you should drink a glass of sweet orange juice every morning to get your vitamin C (thereby consuming so much sugar in the morning that youll want to go back to sleep by noon!); that you may eat more than three meals per day; and, therefore, that snacks are good for you (because they help to balance blood sugar levels, for examplewhich is a major Colossal Blunder!). These would-be puppetmasters are your enemies, and they should be resisted at all costs. Theyll ruin your health while collecting your money. Theyll put you permanently out of business in order to help their businesses temporarily flourish.

Perceptions, Actions, and Results

by William Rodman Shankle, M.S., M.D. If you were to observe your own behavior, it might appear that first you perceive something, then you do something. For example, when hitting a backhand return in tennis, you might conclude that first you watch the ball; then you instruct your shoulders to rotate, your arm to drop the racket below the ball, and then you swing your arm forward in an inside-out motion to hit the backhand return in front of you. Likewise, an actor playing Hamlet may listen to the lines of another actor (perception) to know when he should speak (action). Perception and action seem to be separable events if you observe your own behavior. However, they are inextricably linkedas we shall see. Lets take the tennis example a bit further. If you are taking a lesson, you may be learning the backhand. In this case, you pay attention to the shoulder rotation, the arm drop, and the inside-out forward motion. In other words, your perceptual system is now focused on your muscles moving properly. Once you have learned the backhand, your perceptual system (your attention) now focuses on the ball so that you can hit it out in front of you. You are no longer conscious of your muscle movements. Such is also the case of the actor playing Hamlet. His perceptual 95

system is no longer focused on the lines of the other actors and the words he will say. Rather, he perceives the other actors intended meanings through their speech and body language. He then responds with meaningful words and body language of his own. In both cases, the motor response depends directly upon what is being attended to (that is, perceived). This perception-action system is a fundamental feature of nervous systems. The simplest common example of this system is the knee jerk reflex that occurs when the doctor taps a rubber mallet on your knee. The knee receives this perception translated through stretch receptors. Your leg then kicks forward (without your consciously willing it). The brains perception-action system has been honed by evolution to be extremely efficient. However, this system, like evolution, does not care what the outcome is. For example, bad acting is a result of most peoples difficulty responding naturally when they know others are watching them. Professional actors are able to attend to the human interaction taking place onstage and thereby block out the fact that others are watching them perform. This difficulty with attending to the appropriate stimulus can be overcome through correct practice attending to the proper stimulus. Bad actors can become better actors; and some theatrical directors, such as Konstantin Stanislavski, have developed effective methods to teach performing artists to attend to the proper stimulus to elicit more natural responses. Addictions and obesity are other examples of the perceptionaction system that result in seriously harmful conditions. Individuals suffering from these conditions normally respond to the stimuli to which they pay attention by eating too much food or eating at inappropriate times; or by self-medicating too much. The exciting thing about understanding the way the brain is built and the way it works is that you can make it work for you. So, what is a perception really? It is a representation of what we are attending to at any given moment. This representation allows a perception to be something we are thinking about with our eyes closed, or something we are looking at, hearing, touching, tasting, or any combination of these senses. How is a perception perceived? The brain must deconstruct what it perceives into simple building blocks, then reconstruct it. When you see a red rose, your retina collects the image, sends it to the thalamus, which divides the image into high and low contrast components. The thalamus then sends the image to the primary visual cortex, which breaks it further up into lines, colors, borders, depth, and other simple visual building blocks. This information is then transmitted to other visual areas of the cerebral cortex that ultimately reconstruct these building blocks into the original image of the red rose. Each of these cortical areas is many thousands of square millimeters in surface area, and each square millimeter of cortex corresponds 96

roughly to one of its functional units. About 100,000 neurons make up each functional unit of the cortex. Each functional cortical unit does oneand only onesimple thing. For example, a functional unit in the primary visual cortex may only respond to the color blue, and nothing else. Each functional unit in the cortex has six layers that act like six different components of a machine. Each of these components (or layers) has a different job and talks only to certain specific layers. This arrangement permits a regimented yet sophisticated communication network among the functional units of the human cerebral cortex. A perception is therefore made up of a large number of coactivated functional units that contain the building blocks of the perception. Similarly, an action in the brain is represented by a sequence of activated functional cortical units that connect to the motor neurons of the brainstem and spinal cord, which in turn connect to the muscles of our face and body needed to perform the action. Hence, the perception-action system is really a single system in which the functional cortical units activated during a perception communicate directly to the functional cortical units that produce the action. Understanding this fundamental principle of brain function leads to the breakthrough that directing our perception is literally equivalent to directing our action. Such knowledge is an important key to changing destructive behaviors such as addiction and overeatingas well as altering inexpedient behaviors, such as bad acting! Stanislavski conceived of his acting System as a means to help actors overcome problems caused by the improper focusing of the perception-action system. Amateur actors who go for results focus their attention on the lines and emotions they are trying to perform. This deficient form of concentration means that the focus of attention (perception) is internal and not on the person with whom the actor is supposed to interact. Such a performance comes across as simulated, rather than believable, to most theatergoers. In contrast, professional actors focus their attention on the person or thing to which they are responding, which is what humans naturally do during non-acting situations. Such performances therefore seem credible to audiences. Therefore, by choosing what we attend to, we determine our action. For example, John Barrymore used to get into one of his worldly cast of characters simply by putting on a costume. He chose the perception needed to act. As the great actor, Maureen Stapleton once said to her teacher, Herbert Berghof, at the precise moment she got it: I understand! Dont move a muscle! This idea is profound. She discovered that voluntarily moving any muscle would require her to shift her attention (perception) to the muscle and not to whatever was happening onstage (to which both playwright and audience expert her to respond). In the same way, when we play a game of tennis and are hitting terribly, it is usually because we are focusing on our muscle movements instead of on the 97

ball. With the serious behavioral problems of addiction and obesity, we therefore cannot control addiction or lose weight simply by effort, trying harder, or exercising willpower. We need to know what to attend to so that we can give ourselves the proper perceptions (for example, keeping a compliant activities diary that forces us to pay attention to those activities) in order to drive the proper actions (for example, doing daily exercises), which will lead to the desired results (for example, losing weight). Therefore, to choose a healthier lifestyle, do what actors do: create the proper circumstances (perceptions) that leave you no choice other than to act well.

Memory
Chemical and natural formulas to forestall memory loss are popular these days. In 1997 the amount of sales of the herbal extract ginkgo biloba, derived from an ornamental tree that originated in eastern China, were $240 million. Yet there is currently no scientific proof that this herb, or any of the antioxidants, vitamin mega doses, nutriceuticals, or other unregulated natural medications found in health-food stores and supermarkets, work. Some geriatrics doctors see these products as nothing more than placebos run amuck. [See, for example: Elixirs for Your Memory, Time, September 15, 1999.] However, even if ginkgo biloba worked miracles on memory, it remains true that the brain didnt naturally evolve in a symbiotic relationship with exotic substances. Thus, when artificial means like gingko biloba are ingested to affect the brain in one way or another, long-term results can be unpredictable. Alcohol, nicotine, heroin, and marijuana are other substances that affect the brain in powerful ways. The harmful results these substances can produce in you make it clear that evolution didnt depend on your ancestors ingesting drugs through blood, lungs, or stomach, no matter how wonderful they can make you feel. If it had been otherwise, you wouldnt be risking addiction, lung cancer, or brain or liver damage from substance abuse. Therefore, you can be sure that your body will stay healthier if you avoid trying to enhance your brain functions artificially. On the other hand, no one disputes or warns against the effect on memory of moderate aerobic exercise and challenging mental disciplines (for example, exercises such as reading books and doing crossword puzzles). These natural efforts really do enhance memory retention, although no one can prove exactly why. Its no coincidence that Acting Well requires you to practice aerobic exercises daily, face psychic challenges associated with daily journeys on a World Walk, and do some writing exercises during 98

Morning Preparation. The point of practicing Acting Well is to liberate your willpower so that you may engage in activities that are good for you every day without fail. Thus Acting Well offers a practical system that can be tested to enhance memory. If you are older, be warned that theories about peoples memory are so fraught with misunderstanding, confusion, and misconceptions that much of the distress associated with the kind of memory loss that occurs in older people is probably unnecessary. Mental degradation isnt a normal part of the aging process. Although its generally true that if you dont use it you lose it, its also true that most experiences of memory loss have nothing to do with age or general health. Young people forget things too; maybe some young absent-minded professors forget more than older people do. Young people just dont worry as much about losing their mental powers. Memory isnt a power. An older persons beliefs about memory are important factors in successfully navigating middle age. Unfortunately, most people believe that memory is a power, when, in fact, its a potential effect of a processas muscle strength can result from strenuous exercise; but it isnt there until something challenges the body to exercise its strength. Youre not supposed to remember everything! Some people think they have a right to remember everything; yet, they constantly, subconsciously go about forgetting what they deem not essential. Memory isnt like a bank. Finally, most peopleand some scientistsseem to believe that memory is something like a bank in which you deposit and withdraw information. The brain wasnt built with impressive marble floors and steel vaults. Nor does the brain work like a storage device. Its dynamic, it gets confused, it forgets, and it remembers the damnedest things. All you really need to know about memory enhancement is that if you practice Acting Well daily, your memory will appear to you to be so perfectly normal that when you occasionally misplace your glasses (which you will!) you wont feel any differently about it than you felt the time you misplaced your keys when you were around 20 years old. Do you still remember that incident?

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_________________________________ Much has been made about a mouse bred for enhanced memory that the scientist Joe Tsien of Princeton Universitys molecularbiology department recently announced. The academic community received the news with the proper amount of skeptical reaction; but the media played the event to the hilt, implying that the discovery might make it possible, one day, to engineer smarter human beings. This misconception throws some light on how better to regard the subject of memory. The medias conclusions were unwarranted. What Tsien enhanced wasnt memory. (We cant know anything about what a mouse remembers. We can only observe what it does.) What Tsien enhanced was plasticity, meaning the enhanced ability for sensual data rising out of events to impress themselves on neural patterns that lead to predictable behavior. You may lose some of these switching devices (that is, neurons) as you get older; but the reduction in memories you can retain is probably infinitesimal. What mainly changes as you get older is the amount of attention you direct toward phenomena coming in from the outside. If you pay attention, you will remember. If you fail to pay attention, you will forget. It may be almost certainly true that whatever intelligence is, it depends on memory. However, theres no reason to connect the extension of plasticity beyond sexual maturity with the improvement of the mouses (or human beings) intellect. One of the reasons why there has been so much fuss about advertising to children is that children tend to believe what theyre told and pay attention simply because someone directs them to. We consider children too gullible to be exposed to certain forms of advertising (such as classroom advertising). Its the childrens plasticity that causes their gullibility. If your plasticity were enhanced (or its diminution slowed down), you would be as gullible as a child would. However, certainly no one considers gullibility a sign of enhanced intellect! There are reports of people for whom plasticity doesnt mature as readily as it does in most human beings. The result for these people isnt greater intelligence but confusion and inability to make decisions. Therefore, if Tsien could alter human beings genetically in order to enhance their plasticity the result might cause a great bother and offer no advantage to anyone. As you grow older, as plasticity declines, its not that your memory fails. Its that you require more stimulation to notice things that you need to notice if you want to remember them. That subtle distinction means that the aging process isnt something to fear (it represents a decrease in gullibility and a corresponding increase in wisdom, after all); its just a process to which you need to adjust. Acting Well can help you adjust to what happens to your memory as you get older. It wont make you smarter or affect your mem100

ory in any way (although many people might swear that it does!). What it can do is to make you sensitive to the memory-making process (which is consciousness) every day of your life so that you feel more in control of the things you want to remember. In a way, it will force you to pay attention to things you want to remember. In that way, you wont forget them. Acting Well isnt to be practiced only to enhance your psychic powers. It includes menu and physical activities that are equally important. But if you follow Acting Wells practices, you should never again fear that your memory is failing, no matter how old you get; providing, of course, that no physical problem, such as Alzheimers Disease, alters your brain. Not even Acting Well can stop the inevitable process of mortality. September 1999

Hats
Last night, Len E-mailed us the latest final electronic version of our first book, and so I feel like an enormous task has ended, and its time to start on the next. What? Ellen asked. No champagne? No weekend in the Bahamas? Id forgotten what its like to feel so free of responsibility! However, Acting Well was what I really wanted to work on for the past months; and at last, I have some leisure time to write it! How shall I begin? I read a New York Review last night about a book by Oliver Sackssurely one of the most respected brain specialists around. Unfortunately, his article embodied most of the chronic problems of modern-day brain science, touching on the most prominent Colossal Blunders that have been tormenting the field for 50 years, and glossing over some theoretical-deathtraps with all the self-assurance of a doomed soldier stepping gingerly on a landmine. He never knew what hit him! His analysis mirrors so well the dilemma in the dramatic arts for all the would-be (and terrible) performers who are mistaught either to indicate results (Always sit, stand, and walk elegantly!) or to prepare their performances by isolating themselves from the world like naked yogis trying to contact their inner beings and emotions (wherever those animals reside!) untouchable by real events (such as the truthful emotions of an acting partner or a falling piece of scenery) that might occur during a performance to spark it up. Human beings dont follow either of these courses in real life; and thats why audiences dont believe the performers who indicate or isolate. Ah, say the theatre puppetmasters, but dramatic arts are larger than life! Therefore, I suppose brain science only deals with larger101

than-life brains! Let me be more specific and analyze the precise words Sacks uses that so agitated me. How do we recognize a thinga hat, a flower? he asks. It is easy to show that there is no single location, no module, no hat center, so to speak, in the brain. Oh really? Right here he commits Colossal Blunder #1, which is the idea that, at least in the brain, theres nothing new under the sun. For at least 50 years, scientists have been convincing each other that the brain cells you die with are the same ones you were born with. You never gain new neurons, they said; you only lose a small percentage of them every yearwhich purported fact explains why the brains of the elderly are smaller than the brains of 20-year olds. If adult neurogenesis doesnt occur in humans, then how can there be a hat center in the brain? It would be inconceivable that some vacant real estate inside the skull could, through some magic process or other be assigned hatness. How? Why? What about all the other millions of objects waiting to be assigned each year? How could such choices be made? Theres not enough room! is how their implicit arguments go. These questions spin the head in their complexity and inscrutability. Better just to go along with the fashionable idea that hatness is spread all over the brain (which is the subject of Sacks article; he calls them gradients), and that its uniqueness results from a network dedicated to some object or other that joins various disparate parts. Sacks continues his argument: For if a patient develops a socalled visual agnosia (as did my patient, the man who mistook his wife for a hat), he may be unable to recognize anything visually, even though the elementary visual sensations (and even the capacity to draw) are perfectly intact. But as soon as other senses are called into action the sense of touch, or hearing, or smell, or tastethe object is recognized, categorized, without the least difficulty. Thus the look and feel of a hat are separately represented in the brain, and one may lose one without the other. Implicit in this argument is Colossal Blunder #2, the parsing of object designators by means of nouns (or adjectives) instead of verbs. That is, neuroscientists seem to believe that the mental components that co-join in order to remember or recognize a hat are the usual suspects commonly assumed to describe any hatsuch as color, shape, and texturethat is, Sacks look and feel. The truth is different. The designators are neither nouns nor adjectives. Theyre always verbs. More precisely, theyre skilled actions. Just as every persons collection of skills is unique, so every persons concatenation of skilled actions to designate hat is also unique and unpredictable from brain to brain. How might hat be designated, for example? First, you can only think about a specific hat. There cannot be a general hatness located anywhere in the brain, whether it is located in specific neurons or in 102

unique associative networks. Only the word hat, whether spoken as if it were a noun by the brain or written (both of which are different, albeit related hatnesses) can be considered by the brain as if it were a noun describing hatness. Otherwise, if I think of a hat, I have to think about various skilled actions in order to conjure (that is, perceive, recognize, or remember) hatness. For example, if I were a baby, I might try to suck on a mans hat in order to investigate and absorb some of its hatness. I would certainly see the hat! I could feel its smooth felt fabric and pull out its interior hatband. Thus, my concept of hatness would comprise these skilled actions: I can suck it, see it, feel it, and pull out its band. Those four actions conjoined might completely describe a particular hat experience located somewhere in a babys brain. Every similar object would have a similar but different list of skilled actions concatenated in a specific column combination able to locate it. If someone asked me What does this brain theory have to do with Acting Well? I would answer that Colossal Blunder #2 depends on the same misconceptions as befalls amateur actors who havent yet learned to act, who tend to think about what they have to do in terms of nouns instead of verbs. Thus, an actor playing the father might think authority, sternness, older man, and the like (none of which will help him act!) instead of making such choices as restrict my daughters freedom after 10 p.m., hold the baby in my arms, or kiss my teenage sonfor the last time everfollowing his Confirmation ceremony, because he hasat lastbecome too old to kiss. Thus, Stanislavski-inspired actors are much better as neuroscientists, at least in locating thoughts based on how they must be used. We get around the planet as we do regardless of the incorrect theories repeated by brain experts such as Oliver Sacks (whom I dont mean to disparage even slightlyhes one of the best!). However, a professional actor cant navigate the stage believing false information. Stanislavski somehow corrected the flawed understanding of how we think (which includes how we behave and make art). Those who adhere to his teachings dont make Colossal Blunder #2. Those who are Acting Well know theyre dealing with verbs, not nouns, because they understand their own actions better than the words of a puppetmaster. Thus, they dont lie to themselves or others about how often they exercise (most days of the week), or how careful they are in counting calories (most of the time). With regularity (Every day!) comes exactness. With repetition (Every day!) comes truth. April 2001

103

Its My Hormones!
Hormones, whatever that term means, have long been blamed as a cause of obesity. For example, some of us may have had a chronically obese family member about whom a relative once whispered, Its her hormones, you know. She cant do anything about it. One might then imagine some fat producing substance manufactured constantly in the poor womans body that activates her fat cells, making it impossible for her to reduce. Theres no question that certain hormones are involved in peoples failure to maintain a healthy weight. However, the precise mechanisms by which these hormones operate, and exactly which ones are involved, are rarely specified. Its clear, however, that while practicing Acting Well, testosterone may play the most important role in shedding excess pounds and maintaining ideal weight. The way in which it works, however, is roundabout. Theres no question that intense regular exercise increases feelings of well being, self-efficacy, sociability, etc. These positive psychological effects are probably caused by high testosterone levels, which create almost identical effects in people who inject testosterone directly into their systems. (HIV patients, for example, use the hormone to stimulate their appetites, among other benefits.) What makes an exercise practitioner feel better may therefore be a surge of testosterone that regular intense exercise produces. (Runners often claim to feel the benefits of endorphins. What theyre really feeling, however, is probably more related to testosterone than endorphinswhich are more like metabolic byproducts of other chemicals that make people feel good than feel-good chemicals themselves. Endorphins, however, can be measured more easily in the blood stream than other, more effective chemicals, which never leave the brain intact.) Its been documented that both male and female victors of a tennis match exhibit marked increases in testosterone compared to normal levels for their respective sexes. One might conclude from this observation that if one wants to feel better more often, one ought to take up tennis. That conclusion would be wrong: the only players who exhibit increased testosterone levels are the winners. The losers experience the opposite: their testosterone levels drop to below normal for their respective sexes. Thus, tennis as a mood elevator is an iffy proposition. Although its clear that testosterone is a key element in hormonal activity while playing tennis, it may be that when one exercises intensely and has some kind of winning experience, what gets released in the bloodstream is a cocktail of victory hormones. These substances probably include not just testosterone but other, as-yet 104

unidentified substances associated with the experience of winning. Likewise, there may be a losers cocktail that consists of the dregs from a leftover danger cocktail that included adrenaline, cortisol, etc. From the viewpoint of evolution, there was probably a survival value to ingesting a losers cocktail. If you fought an opponent and won, you could have continued fighting others and probably come out ahead. However, if you lost, it might have been safer for any future contributions to your gene pool to resign from the conflict and slink away. It should be obvious that the exercise practitioner who regularly sips a victory cocktail will comply more consistently with an exercise regimen (as well as a nutritional or psychological regimen). Therefore, its important that the experience of intense exercise be one in which the practitioner consistently wins. (For that reason, the most important benefit of the Acting Well logbook is that it documents and thereby reinforces each days win.) Personal trainers often concoct an illusion of winning to keep their clients coming back. Cheering crowds (at least before the conclusion of a game) probably provide contenders with much needed hormonal assistance they would never get from practice games, or even from their coaches. For these reasons, for the sake of compliance, intense exercise practitioners should probably never engage in competitions in their particular daily sport. They not only risk losing their current competition, but also may compromise their entire motivation to continue regular exercise. A losers cocktail affects motivation as much as a winners cocktail. If evolution makes you want to slink away from a losing battle, youre going to comply with natures imperatives regardless of what your conscious brain tells you you ought to do. If your experience of exercising (or of dieting) is a continuously negative one, your hormones will insist that you quit the practice no matter how well motivated you were the first day you tried it. Thus, in the conflict between hormones and conscious will (or moral ought), the regular victim is willpower or motivation. In other words, compliance to medically prescribed behavior relates more to whats in your blood than to whats in your brain. Thus, efforts to educate patients in the importance of changing their lifestyle have historically failed. Only subconscious, often hormonal changes within patients bodies and brains can make the difference between compliance and failure. Its not true that human beings possess something called willpower. What appears to us as will is more like rationalization. That is, your subconscious makes you do something. Then, after youve done it, your brain creates the rationale behind what you just did. These events occur microseconds apart, which explains why people think that will is a constant motivator. Benjamin Libets revolutionary experiments, which exquisitely timed the relationship between will and behavior, proved beyond doubt (though not beyond controversy, for ignorance dies hard) that behavior always pre105

cedes will. That scientific finding explains why all of us constantly behave according to subconsciously derived motivations over which we have little or no control. If these conjectures werent true, no one would ever break a single New Years Resolution! The immutability of hormonal cocktails doesnt mean that you cant replace one cocktail with another. Thats the only way to change (or reprogram) your subconscious to make it work for you instead of against you. The most talented people to practice such techniques are actors. Acting Well is a discipline created to reprogram the subconscious parts of a persons brain (with emphasis on hormonal effects) so that the practitioners behavior complies more with rational self-interest. In other words, Acting Well reprograms the subconscious. This process is similar, and in some ways identical to how actors derive their characters. These characters ranges may run the gamut from divine saint to foulest murderer, even in the same play. For Acting Well practitioners, however, the main effort is to simulate (but for real) the behavior of a single character, namely a winner. The value of Acting Well is probably greatest for recovering cardiac patients whose doctors have prescribed a change of lifestyle. The method by which a doctor would measure adherence to a lifestyle change program would be to measure compliance to the medical program. If the patient takes a particular medication every day for a week, the weekly compliance ratio is 1. If the patient fails to take any pills during the week, the weekly compliance ratio is 0. The number between 0 and 1 is a good predictor of whether a lifestyle change has occurred and whether it will continue or fail. Acting Well programs used for preventive cardiology must be customized to individual patients (by patient and doctor) to measure compliance to prescribed appropriate behaviors. The simplicity of the program and the daily dose of automatic rewards help maximize patient compliance. The relationship between being a winner and compliance is overwhelming. Since the main purpose of Acting Well is to produce winners, its use can be decisive in the eternal struggle against disease and the aging process.

A Letter from Screwtape

I discovered the following fragment of a letter in my files. I have no idea who authored it. My only clue is the scrawled signature (which looks like the word Screwtape) and my memory of reading a book by C.S. Lewis purporting to be an exchange of letters between a junior and a senior devil named Screwtape. Im probably one of the few people who remember that Mr. Lewis died on the same day that President Kennedy was assassinated. Therefore, I cant imagine that he could have written this letter. 106

Knowledge is our power, but our clients ignorance is bliss. Your job is to keep your client from catching on to the truth. Extend his life as long as possible through medication (your situation depends on his longevity, especially if his propped-up end is filled with decrepitude!). Just make sure he experiences as few of of lifes wonders as you can muster so that you maximize the pleasure of our victory, which, after all, is inversely proportional to our clients misery! Its not hard if you catch the knack. In the field of health care, for example, which is currently all muddy and kicked-up, all the knowledge they think theyve accumulated has threatened an oppressive tyranny over them. That threat was our intention, and it serves us awfully well. Not only does knowledge do them no good; it insults their injuries! Take smoking, for example. If they smoke, they will never stop hearing about how bad smoking is for their health. Thus, weve deflected attention away from all the coordinated good health habits they could have learned simply by analyzing data and separating the smoking habit from everything else. Weve even gotten legislators and city officials to pass laws against smoking! Now whole generations will pass through the smoking habit only to be replaced by younger generations of smokers. Meanwhile, the habit continues indefinitely! The whole system is expensive, and many will break the law. Nothing good will happen. Joy! Let the doctors, scientists, and government officials climb the highest trees and shout that smokers are killing themselves! They only upset the smokers, make the non-smokers feel superior (while they indulge their own life-threatening ingestive habits with food!) and encourage people to denounce the foul air. None of this activity helps anyone. Therefore, we cant lose on smoking! If we get them to ban tobacco altogether (believe me, were working on it!) it will spawn another Prohibition with all the disrespect for law that kind of legislation sets loose. Look at our victories with crack and heroin! Weve decimated an entire generation of young, African American menthe cream of the crop, in fact!by dragging them through the penal system for pursuing the only solid career choice American society leaves open to many of the more educationally-challenged ones, which is dealing drugs. Some of them win, of course; but most of themand all Americanswill lose! Our gain. Then therere all the diets! Your clients all know, more or less, what makes for a healthy menu; yet, they go on eating junk food. They see Fat Free on a label, even for some huge muffin or cookie loaded with sugar, and they figure its good for them! Their stupidity is monumental for such a bright species when it comes to food! They know they should engage in athletic activity, and that they should keep challenging their brains after college by reading books 107

and pursuing other forms of intellectual stimulation. Yet, they avoid these responsibilities for the sake of spending time watching publicity-driven trash television and escapist movies. You can bet they wont do much to reduce the causes and effects of unhealthy stress! Thats why weve taught them relaxation exerciseswhich are probably the worst choice for the kind of stress that kills them! Instead of taking control of their lives, they settle for half an hour or so of mindless calm that supposedly helps them get through the rest of an active day feeling out of control. Its wonderful! They constantly claim they have no willpower (as if willpower were something separate from themselves that they owned) because every time they try to change their life, after an initial flurry of success, something makes the effort too hard to continue. Like the stubborn children they are, they just dont want to do it! No argument. Truth is, when they really want to do something, nothing stops them! You often hear them say (in their finer but briefer moments when reality almost intrudes), I hate my life! But they wont examine why. (I love such moments!unless, of course, they lead to inner reflections that can be highly dangerous to our existence!) The problem is, they know too much! Weve confused them utterly with disconnected facts. They stop paying attention to their own actions, thinking thats the last place theyll find an answer. (Of course, they dont realize their actions are the first place they should look!) Weve done our work so well that, like Poes Purloined Letter, they cant distinguish the truth from the detritusthe menus, the diets, the self-help books, the gurus, the religions, the disciplines, the personal trainers, the dieticians, the health clubs, and the infomercials. They havent figured out that no one can know exactly what kind of regimen would be best for each of them. Theres no Best in Show, of course. Yet, their authorities keep issuing new, conflicting reports. Thats half our battle won! Not so long ago, the great-great-grandfathers of these same doctors and experts thought that leeches were the answer to most ailments. Even today, stores sell dietary supplements with an amount of iron in them that can be fatal to people with hemochromotosis. Doctors and scientists who tell people what to eat, how to exercise, or how to meditate are merely exercising a parental authority that humiliates our clients willpower. (Why, you ask? Because feeling like parents strokes their egos!) How, then, can these poor fools retain any willpower while continuing to obey these surrogate-parent experts? All the knowledge in the world will only continue to rob your clients of their willpower to change. Its part of their genetic makeup. There was obviously survival value in resisting parental authority once a human child became an adult. Your clients secretly want to take their experts place, not their advice. They would do that naturally when they become a parent to their children, except that weve 108

covered that base as well with permissive parenthood, even to the point of charging parents with child abuse who spank their children! (That was a major victory!) Of course, your clients problems dont come from their children but from themselves. But watch out: If they ever learn to treat themselves as they would treat their children, youre cooked! Fortunately, theyre just not very interested in themselves. Although they are their only experts on themselves, they refuse to record even the most salient facts about their lives to help them become more fully conscious of what they actually do. Theyd rather search for entertainment than record the time they start and stop their compliant activities. Leave science to the scientists. Throw caution to the winds. So many failures warm my heart! Let them dream about their Nobel Prizes while we quietly work, behind the scenes, to crank their treadmills to oblivion.... Here, the letter breaks off.

Maharaja Yoga: Triumph of the Will

(Book Proposal) This book will take a novel approach to self-help books. Based on a conviction that the only books that can permanently change your life are ones you write yourself, Maharaja Yoga will show the reader how to spend a small part of every day composing his or her own book. The book may never be completed; but the lifelong discipline will sustain the willpower to live a more creative, self-assured, and healthy life. Maharaja Yoga will show people of privilege (which virtually all Americans are) how Indo-European potentates prepared themselves, and how others prepared them, to rule their people. Just as a Shakespearean actor had to convince his audience that he was Hamlet by using costumes, lights, sound, and makeup, as well as by imitating the quaint behavior of a neurotic Danish prince, so a maharaja had to make decisions about what to wear, what rooms to enter when appearing before the public, how to enter them, what sort of image he should project, what images and acting objectives he could use to prepare himself emotionally for his role, and so forth. If Konstantin Stanislavski had lived 5,000 years ago, he would have been a perfect tutor for the eldest son of a maharaja; for Stanislavski invented, just a century ago, a system of acting that can prepare anyone for just about any role. Maharaja Yoga is about how to practice the Stanislavski system of acting to prepare a public character in which to move about more comfortably and productively in the world. Such a character can develop indomitable willpower in order to do just about anything con109

sistently, if properly prepared. Although the techniques of Stanislavskis method have been known for a century, their use to activate a persons willpower for self-improvement is revolutionary. Although America is the richest country in the history of the world, a lot of psychic misery still prevails. Despite countless diet and nutrition books, one-half the American population still carries around 20 pounds of surplus weight, and 37-million Americans suffer from eating disorders. Despite twenty years of negative publicity about tobacco, alcoholism, and drugs, 61-million Americans still cant stop smoking cigarettes. The members of every fourth American family, involving 88-million people, have to cope with someone affected by alcohol or drug-related problems that cost insurers, governments, and businesses over $220 billion annually. With so much wealth showing off these days, why do more than one out of two marriages collapse? Why do fractured families grow up and repeat the same mistakes? Why do Americans slow their physical lives to a crawl as they get older? Why is there so much substance abuse? Why cant money buy happiness? Popular religions suggest that austerity may be the best solution to the burdens of too much opportunity. Christianitys New Testament has long demanded: Give everything you have to the poor and follow Me. Moreover, Hinduisms Bhagavad Gita requires the yoga practitioner to renounce all material desires and act neither to gratify the senses nor realize the fruits of labor These two systems (and others based on them) were invented in societies where it benefited the power structure to convince their slaves and subjects to abandon all ambitions for wealth and power. The priests, emperors, and maharajas who encouraged these ideas probably figured that if a man is dirt poor, powerless, and inconsolable, what difference does it make to him if he renounces all he has (he has nothing!) to dedicate his life to invisible forces that will someday preside over his happiness in Paradise? Such ideas are perfect propaganda to spread among the downtrodden in a brutally stratified society. In the wealthiest land in the world, however, the Hindu virtue of worldly renunciation makes less sense than a spiritual reward of inner glorification. The Hindu system of yoga based on renunciation (that is, samnyasam yoga) was a discipline designed for followers. However, for the great kings of that time, a different kind of yoga (Maharaja yoga) was more appropriate. The spiritual system practiced by these maharajas was not codified, but it was one of the de facto systems used not only in the Indo-European lands going back thousands of years, but by kings and other political and religious role models in more modern times as well as by the theatrical profession in the last hundred years. It is a highly conscious practice attentive to imagery (or the impression you make on other people) and leadership. Ronald Reagan was an ideal model of an actor-leader that rose to great power through techniques that may or may not have been based on substance. Maharaja yoga can supply the techniques. Its up to the 110

individual (and the moral, ethical, and religious values that affect individuals) to supply the substance. The subject category into which Maharaja Yoga falls is diet/health/fitness; although it touches importantly on several other categories such as recovery, inspirational, new age, sports & recreation, and aging. The main reader who will be interested in the book is anyone who has a problem that cant be solved without an exceptional amount of willpower (thus the subtitle). Most health problems fall into this category, which includes problems that affect people who are overweight, people who need to lower their blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar level, people who need to reduce stress, sedentary people whose health has been compromised by lack of exercise, people entering middle age who have to attend to the new problems that appear at that stage of life, and so on. There is currently no integrated program offered to the survivors of heart attacks. There are many miscellaneous diet, exercise, stress reduction, and motivation programs thrown together at various hospitals and cardiology clinics around the world; but most cardiologists will agree that none of these programs offer a satisfactory, single lifestyle-change curriculum. Unless diet, exercise, and stress reduction programs are integrated into a single, simple lifetime practice, they wont work for most people. Maharaja yoga will offer the first integrated curriculum to address the general health problems of Americans from a truly holistic point of view. The potential market for a book based on a practice that addresses so many dire health problems, and that has actually ameliorated them, is huge. People entering middle age with weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose tolerance, and sedentary lifestyle difficulties will want to benefit from reading the book. Moreover, the book will also attract people who are creative but have self-disciplinary problems such as writers block, problems getting started, or day-after problems when doubts overwhelm talent. The book will appeal to anyone who ever acted, if not professionally, then at least in school or amateur theatricals. Thus, most people will immediately grasp how Hamlets observation that All the worlds a stage and all the men and women merely players applies to learning techniques for behavioral change. No actor should or can force credible behavior on the stage without technique. In the same way, all the willpower in the world wont help an actor cry onstage or tighten a belt three notches. However, by using various techniques well known to actors, tears can flow and pounds can melt. It isnt magic, but it has to be learned. September 1999

111

The Mosaic at the End of the Long Haul

As I fit in, piece by piece, the little paper tiles and the word stones dredged from bookcases, files, and excavation piles all over my desk, let me anticipate the final pieces in my mosaic of advice to the reader. My plan is not to make a pretty picture out of whats available, like rearranging clever mixtures of oil pigments on a canvas, or managing the heroes of a novel. Rather, I see the whole, complete in my brain, right now, made out of unique ideas that recur in my daily life. All the random parts with which I could begin seem already to belong to the whole in a compelling and convincing way that could not have happened had I just raked up random paper fragments out of my basement boxes of essays and rough drafts that go back decades. This vita nova began more recently than that. What is it that gives the mosaic so much coherence and integrity that each new thought contributes to the lastthat none contradicts the whole? Have I hit upon a truth so indisputably powerful that although it challenges the received wisdom of generations of doctors, thinkers, and religious leaders it must ultimately prevail? Doubtful. What makes the design of my mosaic so compelling to me is the neat way in which my troika of Sensible Care practices (meditation, nutrition, and exercise) and all the ideas about them fit together in so ordered a way. Like most people, I began the troika separated into three unrelated systems. Then, as each practice began to affect the other, and as I learned more and more about these new arts, I gradually shifted to more integrated ways of thinking. For example, at some point I could no longer think of dieting using that term, for I wasnt dieting. (I was planning and testing a menu of my favorite foods.) I couldnt think of exercise any more because I had discovered a form of outdoor recreation that served me better than jogging for a specific number of minutes or repeating regulated, counted, gymnastic activities. As for meditation, I began playing games with memory and observation more than 30 years ago (concerning my playwriting) that were quite unlike the feel-good yoga practices currently popular in America. Thus, decades ago I became convinced that to meditate for pleasure, instead of for the purpose of strengthening the brains functionality to improve creative output, was a kind of mental masturbation: an unfruitful self-indulgence compared to the equivalent of sexual intercourse that regenerates the human racean activity more satisfying than mere physical pleasure. Let me stress that my troika was designed by and for myself. Its usefulness is limited to me, and depends on my own self-discovery in the same way that an analysands own self-discovery is essential to 112

successful psychoanalysis. Even when the analyst knows the obvious truth, it must be kept a secret until the patients dreams or creative thoughts reveal the root of the problem. In other words, physician, heal thyself! Youre the doctor, not me. Therefore, do not copy what I did, except to embark on a similar adventure of self-discovery in your own way and time, and by yourself. If you do embark on such a journey, and if you come up with entirely different theories and results from me, God bless you and continue! If you work things right, your own unique mosaic will form in your brain as mine did in mine, but differing in many particulars. The consistency of my mosaic at this point in my life comes from the integration of the three aspects of the recreational troika. They fit togetherbecause I have made them fit together, not through force, but patient practice. From the solidity of that integration came the image of the mosaic. It forms a consistent image now because of the hours I spend each day doing essentially the same things. Proof that the plan is correct is that the more each day adheres to the pattern, the fuller each day gets; the more excited and happy I feel; and the less likely I am to get bored, lonely, or depressed. To recognize a unique mosaic for yourself, you dont start with nothing. Theres no tabula rasa in the brain. Theres a structure already in place through which various archetypes can spin. Sexual attraction, for example, doesnt have to be learned. Nor is the tendency for humans to believe in supernatural forces. Theres a floor on which youll find inscribed a general pattern into which the pieces of your life will fit; and that floor in each of us is fashioned similarly (just as we all have noses and ears) and results from how our races genes assemble our prenatal brains. Thus, things look alike to us because the million cells of our retinas, also bundled together by our genes, tend to send similar signals to the brains of every human being. The brains mosaic is fixedin long term memory, not variable, like a nearly perfect mimic of a working memorys matrix. If the mosaic were variable, it would be like a television screen with fixed pixels that constantly change according to what lights them up and gives the overall picture the illusion of moving reality. Youd have no fixed picture, gist, or long-term memory of the world and could only be dragged about by external signals. Some people seem to create a mosaic something like that in their brain. They see their lives as constantly stimulating change that yields no consistent meaning. Their lives are like watching television. From moment to moment life seems meaningful and interesting until they catch on that someones using tricks and razzle-dazzle to capture their attention long enough to sell them something (that is, if they ever figure out anything about the world!). In a fixed mosaic, each pixel is unique. Of course from time to time you may find a more beautiful element, or several smaller, more appropriate ones, to replace a less perfect, larger one. The pixels overlay an overall design, which is an idea (or ideal 113

or ideational picture) spinning through the brain of its creator. You cant say, in general, that cardinal mosaics are better than ordinal mosaics. Cardinal mosaics work better for television (in fact, make television possible), and ordinal mosaics work best for decorating a floor, especially a monumental floor. It depends on what youre trying to do. In my case, Ive created a mosaic based on observations throughout my whole life, but mainly based on the ideas of Konstantin Stanislavski as applied to preventive medicine. The resulting routines I have created (a sort of method acting health regimen) tend to stick to the same gists and ideas (mosaic) again and again. Proust captured the past through fictional means, stretching out his masterful mosaic over the last years of his life. Similarly, I am trying to reproduce the present in a non-fictional mosaic as faithfully as I can; and it may take the rest of my life to do it. December 1997

The News on Fitness

Theres a striking analogy between reading a newspaper and practicing a daily fitness exercise. You probably learned how to read newspapers when you were young as part of, and because of, the process of learning how to read. At first, you may have had to concentrate hard to comprehend thoroughly. However, after years of practice, youre probably rarely conscious now of reading a newspaper. Your consciousness while reading newspapers is usually restricted to the stories and characters about which youre reading. Your third grade teacher might actually have assigned you the daily task of reading a newspaper knowing that the practice would help develop such skills as vocabulary, spelling, and grammar. However, it was never necessary to explain to you which skills you were developing. Compare this analysis of your own newspaper reading with the usual process of helping people to develop daily fitness habits. Personal trainers, writers, medical authorities, and other fitness coaches tend to assume that most people who want to develop daily fitness habits will fail to be comprehensive. That is, most people wont exercise all the appropriate body parts or processes unless they include a full repertoire of exercises. Thus, coaches will instruct clients that at a minimum, they need to practice aerobic (or cardiovascular) exercises (for example, on treadmills), strengthening exercises (for example, with free weights), stretching exercises (for example, hatha yoga), and endurance exercises (for example, jogging) in order to get a full workout. This degree of comprehensiveness is as unnecessary as telling grade school children that to get a true understanding of the world they must subscribe not just to the New York Times, but to the Wash114

ington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Its one thing for beginners practicing to run a marathon to include stretching exercises in order to prevent muscle strains; but anyone who has been running daily for two years isnt going to get muscle strains of the kind that stretching exercises will prevent! Insisting on comprehensive fitness exercises is therefore always counterproductive. Doing all these exercises take too long to be done on a daily basis; and without daily exercising, developing fitness habits becomes impossible. Furthermore, since few homes have the facilities or coaches to cover four separate fitness areas (and any others that may be potentially useful), clients are encouraged to do their regular workouts outside the home (and sometimes outside the neighborhood) in special facilities such as health clubs. Since a complete workout (plus changing clothes, showering, and getting to and from the health club) will take a minimum of two hourssometimes more, coaches recommend that their clients work out only most days each week, doing other things (such as walking, running, housework, raking leaves, or nothing at all) on days off. The basic assumption these coaches make is that people wont naturally want to, or be able to, exercise every day. Therefore they need to hire a personal trainer if they can afford one, or follow a health clubs regimen that suggests doable (and, also, affordable) scheduled activities that give clients days off so at least theyll have one less excuse (namely, I dont have time!) in order to delay getting started. Finally, clients are urged to participate in games, competitions, marathons, or other social experiences in order to get more variety and fun out of physical exercise. A basic assumption these coaches make is that no single exercise is enjoyable enough for people to want to perform it every day. This assumption is based on the reactions most coaches get from their typical beginning clients, the vast majority of whom will quit after a few weeks or months no matter what the coaches do. Its as if to say that because some children find it hard to read newspapers, no one is ever going to grow up to enjoy reading newspapers naturally. Therefore, teachers must make the reading experience easier and more convenient or lose the students to a lifetime of never reading at all. Therefore, the argument might go, lets explain to children that they dont have to read every day. They only have to study their four newspapers three days a week. (Maybe they should read a book on alternate days, or something else, or nothing at all. Doesnt matter.) Given this schedule, they should save Mondays papers and read them on Tuesday along with Tuesdays papers. It will take them twice as long to read the papers on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, of course; but that doesnt matter, since theyll get Monday, Wednesday, and Friday off. (Of course, Tuesday might be tough, because theyll have to include Sundays editions. However, maybe they can 115

just skip Sundays papers. Theyre too thick, theyre mostly filled with advertising, and not much happens in the world on weekends.) From this point of view, the specific news that a child accumulates is considered unimportant. Only regular reading habits matter. Who would ever develop the habit of reading the papers given this kind of regimen? Next, the children will have to be instructed as to which specific sections to read, because, obviously, only some sections will improve vocabulary, spelling, and grammar. Others (such as the financial sections or the classified advertising sections) can be ignored to save time. We can let the children read the comics, however, because children should at least enjoy the parts of the newspaper that are written especially for them. This analysis of newspaper reading, comparing it to fitness coaching, point outs the absurdity that many fitness coaches inflict on their clients. The truth is that reading newspapers is an enjoyable habit! People wouldnt do it if it werent. Likewise, human beings can easily find a fitness exercise they enjoy and can practice every single day. Trying to make sure that daily or semi-daily fitness exercises meet aerobic, strengthening, endurance, and stretching categories only makes sense for someone who has never exercised before. But if someone practices a single exercise (such as bicycling) every day for five years, constantly pushing the envelope to get better (or really good) at it, that person will eventually get as much aerobic, strength, and endurance exercising out of it as can possibly be needed; and will be sufficiently limber so that stretching exercises arent necessary, except to ameliorate specific problems, such as lower back pain. Furthermore, if you only do one exercise per day around your home, you dont have to spend more than an hour to prepare yourself and do itwhich is a doable daily regimen for practically anyone, and which doesnt require expensive health clubs or personal trainers. Daily fitness exercise should become as natural a part of everyones day as reading the newspaper is for most people. Its not onerous, and its enjoyableexcept for those who are instructed to do too much. Many people cant imagine not reading a daily newspaper when they have the chance. The same should be true of exercise! It wont be, however, for those who arent able to practice every day because their trainers have made it impossible.

What I Do
When I finally hit on my solution to my weight problem (I was about 15 pounds overweight and had a potbelly that preceded me into rooms), it had nothing to do with going on a diet. I didnt restrict myself in any way, nor did I reduce the portions that I ate. In fact, after a while I actually had to force myself to eat more than I in116

tended to because I had lost too much weight and people were telling me I looked gaunt. I became too thin! What I did was to think about my eating habits (which usually depended on someone elses cooking preferences or invitations to restaurants) and slowly create my own menu of healthy things to eat on a regular basis. (At the time, I lived alone.) I prepared and ate virtually every breakfast and lunch myself. These meals were always the same. Dinner was pretty much the same too, except for a variety of entres, mostly supermarket pastas with tomato sauce or Lean Cuisine dinners. I didnt try to create an ideal menu with everything on it that youre supposed to eat. I paid scant attention to the Food Pyramid or Recommended Daily Allowances of this or that nutrient. I still take vitamin pills; but I dont know what Im doing, I probably shouldnt, and I dont recommend them. Above all, I renounced the bad American habit of insisting on a variety of foods for every meal, as if I were a restaurant trying to keep its customers amused. (The truth was, I dont like to cook because its too much trouble.) Mainly, I used common sense. I still shop at only two neighborhood stores to fulfill only the exact needs of my menu (a greengrocer for fruits and vegetables and a supermarket for everything else). Since I never buy anything I shouldnt eat, Im never tempted to eat high fat, high calorie treats. When I go to the store, I know exactly what I need to get, and I never think about getting anything else. Therefore, bingeing (which I would have a tendency to do) is out of the question for me. (If you dont have it, you cant eat it!) These changes in my eating habits were pretty much all I did as far as food was concerned. What mostly took the weight off (and more importantly, what kept it off) was riding my bike up and down the hills of Central Park virtually every day. My experience taught me that anyone who wants to go on a diet without including a daily, major physical effort is simply foolish. Dietary resolutions independent of exercise are guaranteed to fail. If you refuse to exercise, youll literally have to starve yourself for the rest of your life in order to remain slender. Anyone who has that much determination will probably prefer (and be able) to exercise daily. I only exercise a half hour a day (not including some negligible stretching exercises in the morning to prevent lower back problems) under the theory that 30 minutes per day will not interfere with my work or my life, whereas I would only be able to exercise three or four days a week if I were doing an hour or two per session. Unfortunately, if you dont exercise virtually every day, you cant create an exercise habit! Without an exercise habit, its almost impossible to maintain an exercise schedule lifelong. The actual amount of time I spend exercising is around 35 minutes, including 10 minutes getting down to the park and back, and not including showeringwhich I think is usually unnecessary if one showers regularly in the morning. Thus, I only ride for about 25 min117

utes, touching the envelopeup hillsfor about six minutes out of the 25. However, for the first few years, I had to ride the full 30 minutes to circuit the park, which is what I recommend to others, at least when starting out. These changed habits were integrated with a Morning Preparation that I started doing for about an hour before breakfast every morning. I steal this hour for myself to figure out how to make myself more conscious and to keep to my resolve. I couldnt have created and stuck to my daily menu and practiced daily fitness exercises without this daily psychic reconditioning. Thus, all these practices work together, support each other, and reinvent me every day. (I should add that keeping a log, which is part of Morning Preparation, is the most essential part of the overall discipline. However, thats another subject.) My efforts directed toward these three elements (brain, body, and nutrition) hold my life together now like the three legs of a stool. If you want to change your life, you must pay attention to these areas. You cant just do one or two. You have to tackle all three. Theres a fourth area, if you want to stay healthy, and that is to reduce or stop smokingor to stop drinking if youre an alcoholic. However, that fourth leg didnt apply to me. I stopped smoking after considerable difficulty!almost 40 years ago. You shouldnt copy me, except to experiment, as I did, with different foods, different psychological techniques, and different physical programs until you find the ones you love to do. Im serious about the word love! If you cant honestly say that you love what you eat and do, then keep looking until you can! Figure out what works for you and what you enjoy. Avoid too many changes too quickly and all at once. Take plenty of time to work things outafter all, you have the rest of your life to discover, improve, and write up what works. Take months or years if you need to, as long as you keep thinking of each day as an important new experiment that can benefit others as much as yourself. If someone had told me, several years ago, how fast I would one day ride my bike around the park, I would have been incredulous and mightily impressed! However, even after a few weeks, I noticed and was proud of the difference it made in my life. I didnt need to think about how inadequate I actually was back then by almost any elses standard. In other words, dont set goals! They tend to stop you dead and contribute nothing to your resolve. After youve found your way (youll know when you do!), destroy the journals and forget the good advice you thought the world was waiting foras Ive destroyed just about everything I wrote along the way. (Everything I write here is either from memory or severely rewritten.) Above all, remember these rules:

If youre not sick, dont look for cures! Wellness isnt a disease. Dont treat it like it is.
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Dont consider the aging process to be an illness. Its a fulfillment that requires some special attention, thereby giving you a golden opportunity to get better and better!
October 1997 and May 2000

Pep-Talk
Thanks for your comments! I was a little puzzled by your reference to the dogmatism of my style. Can you be a little more specific? Im well aware of the problems of people practicing wrong techniques in health clubs, and didnt mean to give the impression (although I realize I did) that I disapprove of personal trainers, as you will see from the following rewrite. I used to sit in Uta Hagens acting class and watch her teach. She may be the greatest living actor, and shes probably the most sought-after acting teacher now, but I once noted the subtlety of how she could make an actor depend on her. Strasberg did the same, but differently. That kind of coaching I think isnt the best. I prefer my own style of coaching: in writing, from the sidelines. No rejections.

_________________________________ If Im not for myself, then wholl be for me? If Im only for myself, then what am I? If not now, then when? _________________________________ These famous lines, from Ethics of the Fathers, sound mystical; but they can be very practical at times, applying to many occasions. Lets take one: the idea that some people are special when it comes to practicing good health. They just cant do it by themselves! They need a doctor, a guru, a nutritionist, or a personal trainer: someone to give them a test, a push, a schedule, or a hit over the head. The problem isnt that they cant do it by themselves (they can!); its that they never get started. Theres nothing wrong with someone standing within sight of first base to tell you whether to run or stay after youve hit the ball. Many health club subscribers damage their bodies because no one shows them how to use the equipment safely. The real problem is failing to begin because theres no one standing in your corner. Someone must begin to change your character, 119

and that someone can only be youregardless of who else helps. Changing characters is an acting problem, not a sign of moral strength. Movie stars are notorious for believing they cant give a good performance unless a good director coaches them. Whats moral about that? The truth is that some of these beautiful and insecure actors just arent very bright. However, at some point, all experienced and dependable stage actors must declare their independence from a coach. They need to figure out what their characters want to do, realize what they as actors have to do, and then just do it. You can do it too! Were all much stronger than we realize. When you read tales of heroism, you wonder how folks can rush into battle, pull kids out of fires, or risk drowning to save a grandmother. However, when you talk to these people they seem like you and me. They dont think they did anything special. They only did what they had to do. What made them heroes was having no choice but to act alonein the presence of witnesses, perhaps; but without a helping hand. Why accept weakness in yourself? Believe me, you can rise to any occasion! However, if you dont believe you can, your weakness will become self-fulfilling. If you slack off from the git-go, its probably just your habit. Nevertheless, if you really look at your life, youll find endless examples of courage and persistence. Just getting up every morning requires a profoundly moving faith in the future. Pat yourself on the back for it! If you can put up with lifes tribulations you can do anything you wantand without a film director to coach you. This little pep talk isnt directed at the world in general. Its meant specifically for you. Im convinced youre just like me about this subject. I may have tried a little longer than you have, and failed more oftenbecause Im probably older than you are. Nevertheless, I found success just as fulfilling and pleasurable as I know you will. See how I believe in you! However, what difference does it make what I think? Why should anyone believe in you if you dont believe in yourself? Only when a coach knows what you can do for yourself will that coach bother to take you on. Why would anyone bother to help you if they think youre going to fail? Its like a bank loan. If you really need one, you dont qualify. Part of the technique of making difficult changesthat is, adopting behavior not typical of your characteris that you have to break down the problem into a certain performance sequence. Life resembles a play script in that sense. Just as an actor has to put on a new character, you must adopt a scripted sequence whenever you have to do something not in character with you. Someone may have written down a script for you, but you still have to memorize what comes first and what comes second each time (even if your rule is simply first things first). The failure to understand this principle is the primary reason why people think they cant achieve. They dont know how to create a script, and so they dont know where to begin. Therefore, they look for a coach, director, or 120

personal trainer to start them off each time. Obviously any movie director who reads or writes a script can figure out a sequence! So can any actor. So can you. However, if you need a coach to hold your hand forever, youre working with the wrong coach. One of the secrets of character change is to realize that, just like any movie actor, youre performing actions for other people. That realization is the first element in your sequence: to realize that other people will witness the actions you perform. Therein lies an important meaning to the words: If Im only for myself, then what am I? Youre not a character unless other people know how to define your character from the actions you perform in front of them. One of the values of a personal trainer is to be an audience that pays attention to you, thereby encouraging you to change each time. However, an audience can consist of mere strangers on the street (literally) before whom you practice and perform. (You should take advantage of this idea at least once a day!) For example, if youre a jogger, people are going to see you jog. Imagining those people paying attention to you can help sustain your jogging regimeneven though theyre probably ignoring you, just as actors use (and need) audiences to watch them perform. Finally, theres an eternal present to the problem of changing your behavior. Whether or not a personal coach or the world outside is present, if you dont make the change now, you never will. All life takes place in the now. The future will never arrive, and the past is inaccessible. Therefore, if not now, then when? February 1998

Fit to Play
Reprinted from THE TIMES (of London) SATURDAY MARCH 10 2001 Acting the part of a thinner person changes your life BY VICTORIA MCKEE Roy Scheider is promoting a fitness regime based on the Stanislavski Method WHAT if you could wake up one morning and no longer have a desire for a cigarette, or a chocolate bar, or any of the other vices that you know are destroying your health, figure or joie de vivre? Sound too good to be true? Well, the American actor Roy Scheider believes that you can, simply by following a method which actors use to prepare for their roles. Its a question of Acting Well, the name of the 121

new programme Scheider believes could be a breakthrough in the field of health and fitness. Think of the willpower it must have taken for Tom Hanks to slim down for his recent role in Cast Away, or for Demi Moore to pile on the muscle and resculpt her body to become GI Jane, so physically different from the stripper she had just played in Striptease. Well, Scheider claims that we all can accomplish such phenomenal feats with our bodies if we mentally prepare for them in the way that actors do. The key lies in starting to think like an actor preparing for a part using what has come to be known as the Stanislavski Method, after Konstantin Stanislavski, co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre, who brought it to the West. Scheider claims to have used the actors technique to dramatically improve his fitness since his teenage years. I was a fat child, he admits. I weighed 196 pounds when I was 14. I had to do a lot of work recreating myself. I exercised every day in order to become an actor. To motivate myself to do this, I created a thin character in my mind, a Roy Scheider who was a slim, athletic person who could move well, and I therefore did what that person would do. I became thin and fit, not because it was my goal, but because it happened in the process. Ten years ago, shortly before the birth of his son, Christopher, Scheider, now a fit 68, realised he had been smoking for too long. Id been smoking heavily all my life, but I decided it was time to redefine my character for myself into what I guess you would call a father figure, he says. I had just been told by Brenda (Siemer, his wife) that we were going to have a baby and I realised that I would be a father for the rest of my life. I felt that a father should set a better example for his child than the kind of character I played in All That Jazz, who smoked non-stop and died of a heart attack. So I created a new character for myself who didnt smoke and literally gave up smoking overnight. I thought, What if today I say that Roy Scheider is not a smoker and convinced myself that the character Roy Scheider was too smart to be a smoker. I told myself, He wouldnt be that dumb and it worked. Scheider, who will be at the Cannes Film Festival in May, promoting his latest film, The Good War, jokes about being the poster boy for the programme he has put into practice in his own personal life with such dramatic effect. He is happy to act as a motivator and hopes to involve interested friends, such as Helen Hunt and Gwyneth Paltrow, he says, in promoting it too. He is working with teachers at the Stella Adler School, in New York, which has long taught the technique to actors, including Scheider himself, to bring this method to the masses. Yet the work in this area is being pioneered with cardiologists in St Petersburg, Russia. Scheider himself went to Russia and saw at first hand how bad the problems of heart disease are there, with the average life expectancy of men only 59. Doctors say they just cant get across messages about eating healthily and exercising, he says. Changing bad habits would go a 122

long way towards preventing the huge problem there. An American cardiologist, Dr Ronald Masden, is working on a clinical trial of the Acting Well programme for Russia, where the intention is to provide it free through television and the Internet, while his colleague Dr Alexander Shaknovich is overseeing a clinical trial of the programme in New York. The major problem for doctors in this field is how to get people to exercise, eat right, and take necessary medications consistently, Dr Shaknovich says. Acting Well could be the magic bullet that doctors can prescribe for effective behaviour modification. Since Acting Well will be marketed as a scientific programme, it is being put through trials to prove its efficacy, although as with any mind-over-matter programme, it is always difficult to prove such things conclusively. A documentary is being recorded for American television chronicling the experiences of candidates using a variety of weight-loss programmes and to compare the success of Acting Well with the success rates achieved by other methods, such as WeightWatchers. To date, all candidates who have used the programme for weight loss and maintenance have reported 100 per cent efficacy, Scheider says. However, there may be a several-month rehearsal period before a candidate can perform in life as a thin person. Other benefits envisaged for the Acting Well programme are that it could be effective in stopping all kinds of substance abuse. People can use it not just to conquer addictions but phobias and personality problems, such as shyness and uneasiness in crowds or just to build self-esteem, Scheider says. You can start to act the part of someone who deserves a raise, who is confident and outgoing. The Acting Well programme which should be available in book and video form later this year, as well as through various acting schools and fitness centres and by telephone and Internet coaching sessions involves about 30 minutes of morning preparation, using motivating psychological exercises such as those actors use. You keep a journal of your feelings and progress and when you start to really feel the role and actually begin to like the part because it is giving you benefits. There are different ways of getting there, and I always feel it doesnt matter if you work from the outside in or the inside out, Scheider says. But you have to keep it up. I know that even today, at my age, sometimes when Im undressed and alone I can look in the mirror and see the fat 14-year-old boy I once was. Thats one of the things that keeps me in my daily regimen of exercises. I dont want to be that character any more. Copyright 2001 by Victoria McKee as published by Times Newspapers Ltd. in The [London]Times, March 10, 2001

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The Placebo Effect and Our Compliance Program

Dear Dr. Masden: Ive been thinking about the placebo effect in risk reduction methods and wondering if we should include information on that difficult subject in our proposals. For one thing, you mentioned that although specific risk factors are cumulative (the more exercise the better), multiple factors are geometric. To test for the placebo effect as it relates to multiplying risk factors in an overall program seems to me to be highly unlikely, as it would be prohibitively expensive. Just as the multiple risk results are geometric, so the testing of several factors that could influence the placebo effect would be geometrically determined, possibly four risk factors to the fourth power, five to the fifth, etc. Following are my thoughts and references to materials Ive gathered lately about this subject. It would appear that modern medicine is sufficiently sophisticated to discount the placebo effect on heart disease treatment statistics. However, we may be deluded in thinking so. For centuries, Western medicine consisted of almost nothing but the placebo effect. (Talbot) In 1955, Beecher published The Powerful Placebo, a seminal report of twenty-six studies, which was undoubtedly chiefly responsible for the double-blind study design being adopted as the universal standard. Beechers calculations showed that at least 32.5 percent of any treated group would respond to a placebo effect. (Beecher) Subsequent studies have shown much higher figures. For example, some studies show improvement after placebo treatment for certain heart ailments closer to 50 or 60 percent of subjects, sometimes even more. In addition, the authors of The Power of Nonspecific Effects in Healing analyzed data for popular medical treatments that had been abandoned as ineffective. They found, for example, that good or excellent outcomes resulted in 69.8 percent of almost seven thousand cases studied. (Dodes) A recent analysis presented at an American Psychological Association convention showed that of 39 studies of 3,252 depressed patients, only 27 percent of the response showed a true pharmacological effect, and 50 percent of the drug effect was due to the placebo response. (Self Help Magazine) In comparisons of new drugs to relieve angina pectoris, relief with placebo commonly exceeds 50%, a figure that presents a significant challenge to demonstrate the effectiveness of any active test drug. (Krentzman) Evidence for placebo effectiveness isnt just associated with how 124

patients claim to feel. For example, 52 percent of colitis patients treated with placebo in 11 different trials reported feeling better; and 50 percent of inflamed intestines actually looked better when assessed with a sigmoidoscope. (Talbot) In 1960, Leonard Cobb tested a then popular procedure for angina called internal mammary ligation, in which doctors made small incisions in the chest and tied knots in two arteries to try to increase blood flow to the heart. 90 percent of patients reported that it helped. However, when Cobb compared it with placebo surgery, the sham operations proved just as successful. The procedure was abandoned. (Talbot) These data seem especially relevant to our risk reduction project, which is generally dependent on findings about medications and treatments whose affects on risk reduction (except for smoking cessation) rarely rise above 30%. Compare that figure with the 35 to 75 percent of patients who benefit from taking dummy pills in studies of new drugs. (Talbot) For example, last summer, Peptide Therapeutics revealed that its new allergy vaccine was only as effective as a placebo. During trials, 75 percent had improved. However, the control group data also showed 75 percent improved after taking inert tablets. (Talbot) Merck abandoned a new antidepressant for the same reason. In addition, Genentech abandoned a highly touted, genetically engineered heart drug called VEGF after it discovered that a placebo actually performed better than the drug! Two months after treatment, patients who had gotten low doses of VEGF could walk 26 seconds longer on a treadmill; those who had gotten high doses could walk 32 seconds longer; and those who had gotten a placebo could walk 42 seconds longer. (Talbot) Besides these alarming considerations concerning placebos, other problems exist that may skew data on which our treatments may depend, such as:

Spontaneous remission (some illnesses just get better). Regression to the mean (a certain percentage of patients will get better no matter what, and many illnesses wax and wane). How long various treatments last (many studies end after only 8 or 12 weeks, and placebo effects may flag sooner than real ones). Physicians treat so many illnesses aggressively that their natural history (what would happen if nothing were done) is often unknown.

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Finally, very few studies compare a placebo group with a group receiving no treatment at all. The reason is that such a study would test mainly the placebo, and its the active drug most researchers care about. In oncology, for example, placebos are almost never used, for oncologists presume that in cancer the placebo effect is ineffective, and need not be considered in clinical trials. (Zajicek)

The question is: How much can we trust the idea that treating heart disease aggressively with drugs is effective? Given the above data, plus the low rate of effectiveness of risk reduction through drugs (less than 1/3), may we not conclude that the effectiveness of all drug treatment for heart disease may be no greater than the placebo effectespecially for people with multiple risks? My belief is that even if the compliance program we are designing derives its effect entirely from the placebo effect, the net gain to cardiovascular patients will still be much greater than if patients treat their problems exclusively through medications. That is, if someone gets better because their body heals itself through mysterious psychological processes, self-hypnosis, prayer, a personal trainers charisma, simple good luck, or what have you, it still gets betterand thats the result everyone wants; whereas, if one treats hypertension exclusively with beta blockers, or stress with Prozac, or hyperlipidemia with statins, instead of through more natural therapy (mainly exercise, which can affect all three conditions at once)whether the effects of the drugs are what the pharmacologists say they are or not, little ultimate good will be done. If the patients dont die uncomfortable deaths because their cholesterol is too high, the same patients will likely succumb to high blood pressure or dangerous stress levels. Therefore, people who go on a program like Acting Well can expect to do at least as well as people who medicate their cardiovascular problems exclusively, and probably much better, at a much lower costin fact, virtually for nothing! April 2000 _________________________________ REFERENCES H. K. Beecher, compiled from several sources. The original article appeared in JADA. Robert Todd Carroll, quoting Dr. Walter A. Brown, Brown University, http://skepdic.com/placebo.html John E. Dodes, The Mysterious Placebo, http://www.csicop.org/si/9701/placebo.html 126

B. Krentzman, http://www.loop.com/~bkrentzman/meds/placebo.html Margaret Talbot, The Placebo Prescription, New York Times Magazine, 1/9/2000, www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000109magtalbot7.html Self Help Magazine: Listening to Prozac but Hearing Placebo, http://www.shpm.com/articles/depress/antidprs.html Gershom Zajicek, http://www.md.huji.ac.il/special/cancer/19952.html

How to Stop Smoking

It happens quite often that heroin addicts who renounce drugs, sometimes years earlier, one day find themselves among folks using heroin and suddenly realize theyre shooting up! What are they doing? What happened? they ask themselves. Its as if nothing changed, as if it didnt matter that theyre throwing years of hard-won rehabilitation down the toilet. What happened is that theyve reverted to character: to who and what they were before their rehabilitation. When they find themselves in the old environment, where every clue leads to the same conclusion, they resume old habits as if theyd left off yesterday. Similarly, in the Acting Well videotape, The Magic Bullet, Hyehwa (pronounced HAY-wa), describing how strongly her old environment triggers smoking behavior, challenges the theory that everyone has a sensible true self (or spirit or soul) underneath it all to revert to in a pinch. On the contrary, our characters are summations of our habitual behavior. They have little to do with an occasional noble, healthy, thoughtful, selfless, or desirable out-of-character choice. In other words, were not who we wish we were, or think we ought to be. Were who weve always been, moment to moment, behaving exactly as were accustomed to doing. Thus, its unthinkable that a coward will suddenly become a hero in battle. Rather, the unfortunate fact is that, when push comes to shove, every human being is a coward. Our instincts for selfpreservation are too strong. Therefore, every army has to train its soldiers in such a way that certain actions and physical skills (such as following orders, or performing by the numbers) take over automatically in a battle crisis. Thats why heroes almost never acknowledge their heroism. Heroism often surprises them, and theyll typically say, It didnt seem so special at the time. I just did my job. In other words, a typical heros training was such that, when 127

push did come to shove, the hero knew exactly what to do. No alternate choice (such as dropping a rifle and running) had ever been practiced. Only the proper course of action (such as shooting back) was repeated and repeated, and was therefore doable. In The Magic Bullet, Hyehwa says, When Im with my family, whether, regardless, its for ten days, a week, three days, I dont smoke. I dont go for ride, I dont go for walk, try to sneak, because my mother, shes got nose of a hunting dog. You know, she can smell in my hair, and shell say, Oh, youve been smoking! Its just not worth smoking around my family, so I dont.... People are, like, Well, if you can go for that long a period without cigarette, then you can quit. And I cant, because...the minute I land in New York City; the minute Im in an environment where I am allowed, I have to have a cigarette. Hyehwa resumes her smoking habit when she leaves her family for two reasons: (1) she doesnt feel the need to quitwhich is her prerogative; and (2) the force of her habit, and her enjoyment of it, is stronger than her need to follow other peoples good advice. Whats interesting is that when shes with her family she seems to have no problem overcoming a compulsion to sneak. In other words, her family character (meaning her habitual behavior in the presence of her family) is so strongly established that she overcomes what might otherwise be an incredibly strong need to smoke. This cultural phenomenon obviously helped make it part of her character not to be a person who smokes during the day. I found myself, I dont know, like a year or so ago, that smoking a little too much, and I decided, I dont smoke during the day. So I dont smoke during the day. And maybe thats another role playing, Im not a person who smokes during the day. Korean families, like most Asian families, are noted for their strong bonds. If Hyehwa were born and raised in America in recent years, its unlikely shed be so respectful of her mothers opinion! Since Hyehwa seems to have no problem smoking some of the time and refraining from smoking at other times (not an uncommon situation), it seems likely that she could stop altogether if she really wanted to. The trick to it would be to create a simple habitual action (such as looking at her mother if it were possible to do at any time) that would automatically turn on a no smoking period in which she wouldnt only not smoke, but not even think about it. One Russian director created an ingenious activity in order to get a certain actor to express his characters violent desire to leave his provincial surroundings. The director suspended a swing onstage. The swing hung throughout the play with no purpose for being there until the moment the actors partner sat down in it and started swinging. The actor stood behind her and pushed her. He spoke his lines with every push. They went something like, I want to go to London! (Push.) I want to go to Paris! (Push.) I want to go to Berlin (Push.)...! After the mention of each city, the actors partner swung higher and higher. 128

Given this brilliant direction, there was no way that the actor could fail to express convincingly his frustrated desire to escape provincial boredom. If Hyehwa wanted to set up the right physical tasks for herself that would divert her desire to smoke whenever she found herself in in an environment where I am allowed, she would soon end her smoking habit. Similarly, if you direct yourself to perform certain physical tasks (the simpler the better) as you begin your Morning Preparation (for example by recalling your World Walk from the night before, and actually walking in your chair), youll find it difficult not to think the right thoughts that lead your Steps & Landings to their ultimate conclusion, where you write an essay you never wanted to or thought you could. If you dont follow this simple direction (or some equally effective one for you), your mind will wander off the point and quickly reinforce your old idea that you simply cannot write! Changing strongly established habits invariably depends on establishing new and simple physical habits to replace undesirable behavior. Some retiring smokers suck on candy. Others snack (which isnt such a great idea) or find similar rewarding activities with which to occupy themselves. Whatever method someone uses to stop smoking, you can be sure it wont be psychological, intellectual, spiritual, moral, courageous, or real self thoughts that do the trick! It must involve the simplest sensual and motor activities imaginable to work. In other words, its usually a simple habitnot moral courage that makes a hero brave.

The Benefits of Acting Well

Acting Well will help you understand your consciousnessa subject that baffles most scientiststhrough metaphors, not scientific experiments and proofsand thereby extend your analytical powers and free you from the tyrannies of doctors, politicians, healers, teachers, writers, and scientists who enjoy playing God. Acting Well will be your personal trainer, your physical therapist, your psychoanalyst, your private nutritionist, and your taskmaster who pushes you to ever-higher levels of endurance. Youll develop skills you didnt know you had, and polish and prepare them for combat against your stronger demons until daily victory establishes the hero you can bein the eyes of the world. Acting Well will lead you on a journey through the community, every day for the rest of your life, to sense human realities you never tasted. Those sensual realities are the poetry that translates and unites you with the people and the sounds and inner visions of your neighbors works; even to those poor people who beg or are too old or young or idiosyncratic to become brothers and sisters who interest 129

you. Acting Well will command you to evangelize. Like all good evangelists, youll want to share your new discoveries with friends, lovers, and children; but you can share them only with those who recognize and declare, as do recovering alcoholics, their humanity and need to serve, receive, and lend support. Although Acting Well may tempt you to become an evangelist, it requires no declaration of faithonly keener observations than youre used to, and more cutting analyses than you thought necessary. Yet, the religious fervor Acting Well inspires will persist lifelong. It will be a fervor that is worthy of you because its based not on heavenly faith but on stone reality. Thus Acting Well will convert your prayers of supplication into laboratory notes in which you participate in wide-ranging, non-randomized experiments, use the Internet both for outreach and for in-reach, and compose your own Book of Hours. Acting Well will stop your building chapels in the air, that float unbridled with the spirits; but will tether your thinking to the concrete sounds of city and natureoff the clouded cliffs of heaven to the humbler, stream-washed pebbles of reality that stop your throat from humming mindless ditties, putting an end to the Nobel, Tony, Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and all gold-watch acceptance speechesthat mainly charm the bathroom mirror. If you follow directions in detail, youll lose weightif thats what you need to do. It will come off automatically in a reasonably short time and you wont even think about it. Youll notice, one day, you need new belt holes, or youd better see the alterations person at the cleaners. Youll probably eat more than youre used to in order to get all the nutrients you need so that you wont have to swallow food supplements every day. Youll enjoy purchasing, preparing, and eating food more than you ever have; and you wont feel guilty about that subject ever again! Youll never have to experience hunger, and whatever cravings you used to have will disappear. Youll never have to suffer again from food-related acid indigestion. Your body will become the only food expert youll depend on. Youll learn to recognize what its unique and subtle requests, complaints, and messages are telling you; and youll choose the foods it wants you to have, in the proper quantities. It will reward you with simple, satisfying pleasures. Youll feel stronger and physically better off than you ever felt beforeexcept, if you were an athlete in school or in the armed forces during basic training, youll remember and compare what it felt like in those halcyon days. If youre suffering from middle-age syndrome, with symptoms like rising blood pressure and falling libido, then Acting Well will offer you the most elegant restoratives. They wont come in pill form, however. In fact, your doctor may suggest that you throw your pills away. Your physical endurance will shock you. If you like fast dancing 130

youll marvel how long you can stay on the floor without getting winded or tired. If you run, youll be amazed how much farther you have to go before you hit the wall. Moreover, if you bike youll beat everyone except professionals up the steepest hills. Your energy will never flag. No inconvenient breaks and naps will leach valuable time from your schedule. However, old you are youll feel beautiful. Your skin will radiate a glow so that people will tell you that youre looking better than ever. Maybe for the first time in your life youll like what you see in the mirror (although you may not like your face in snapshots because simple cameras dont capture the radiance). Whatever the objective truth is, youll walk amongst people feeling proud of how you look. Youll start dressing better and wearing finer clothes in more stylish fashion, getting even more compliments on your appearance. If you engage in weekend sports youll stop feeling cool by pretending youre a professional competitor for whom its necessary to wear expensive costumes and purchase extravagant equipment. Youll be relaxed, and youll sleep without problems. Your body will let you know the exact number of hours it wants you to rest sometimes six, sometimes eight. Youll rise every morning eager to meet the day. Youll wonder what made you stop worrying. Your problems and prospects wont change that much; but if they start to get you down youll spring back after a nights sleep, eager to meet new challenges and solve the old ones. If something stresses you too much youll know what to do; but youll practice relaxation remedies only when you have tonot twice a day, and rarely even once. Getting rid of headaches will be simpler, too. To summon up the full powers of your consciousness, youll need nothing more than the sound of a taxi-horn or the rumble of an airconditioner. The simple snap of a light socket will do it, as will the straining of a truck transmission, the rustle of a bending tree, the cooing of a lost bird, the delicious scratching of an itch, the strain of the neck, or the constant fear concealed behind the draperies of your solar plexus. Acting Well, like visiting the Wizard of Oz, will tear away the curtain to reveal the mechanics of your psyche. Thus Acting Well can disillusion you, but can also make you wiser for the backward trip to Kansas. Acting Well will teach you to love America because it was the first country to guarantee the freedom to pursue happiness. Thus Acting Well will provide your own personal Declaration of Independence from the protective custody of your lethargic brain and anyone that would enslave it.

The Forest and the Trees

If neuroscientists werent scientists, they wouldnt focus so exclu131

sively on what they can see, feel, and measure. If they werent so materialistic, they wouldnt fail, so often, to ignore the nature of the forest (that is, content or thought) for the trees (neurons, dendrites, and axons). An analogous situation would be if communication scientists were trying to explain how a telephone system works. No doubt, their science would require them to concentrate only on the material aspects of the network (which, in many ways, constitute a reasonable approximation of the human brain!). These scientists would undoubtedly ignore all conversations (or content) going on over the network at the time of their study in order to focus on the telephone lines and cables that connect the instruments. Scientifically speaking (they would claim), telephone conversations (for which all telephone systems were built since Day One!) are as irrelevant to how the connections are made as God is to a scientific explanation of evolution. In an analogous way, neuroscientists ignore the thinking process as being too ethereal, too will-o-the-wisp to capture and study; too subjective, too always-different, and therefore, too unscientific to bother with. Because of their insistence on objectivity, neuroscientists have created a picture of the brain that provides the precise locations of various processes, but no overall convincing explanation as to what actually happens when human beings start to think. Thus, we know, more or less, where tones are heard, where stripes are recognized, and where words and sentences are analyzed; but as to what music is, or what words mean, such information is considered irrelevantexcept to the thinker, who is never a scientist. To the thinker, of course, the location of a thought is completely unknowable (even accurate pictures and diagrams could never be verified subjectively) and therefore completely uninteresting. As a result, if Susie and Amy, who live in separate apartments in the same building, are talking over the intercom system, they dont care about the fact that their telephone lines both go down to the basement in order to hook up to each other through an exchange system. They could as easily string a wire between their respective apartments and create their own networkif the building allowed it, and if they talked often enough to warrant it. Such a possibility, in fact, is sometimes exercised by the brain itself through the extension of dendrites. Suppose were listening in to Susie and Amys conversation. What might interest us probably wouldnt be the sound of their voices as much as learning about the dirty deed that John and Mary did in the back of Johns SUV last Saturday night! John and Mary are referents in the world. If we happen to know who John and Mary are, then Susie and Amys conversation can clue us into a small scandalin which case things may start to get really interesting! We may only know so many Johns, only two of them may know a Mary; we may only know so many Marys, and only two of them may 132

know a John. However, we may know only one John and one Mary who know each other. Therefore, by process of elimination, weve just figured out which John and Mary got caught shtoopping in the back of the SUV last Saturday night! This process of identifying referents is called thinking. Thinking is probably what the brain does best. Its less good at self-analysis. Thus, knowing about the cabling system that helps the brain think; or gathering information about the location of listening posts (that is, the telephone instruments) wont tell us much about anything, much less about John and Mary! The point of this analogy is that the brain is a massive system that is designed only to tell us about the world outside. It tells us almost nothing about itself. (It doesnt have to.) Neuroscientists who study the brain have done a poor job so far because theyve concentrated on the materials inside the brain instead of the referentswhich are the things in the world on which the brain focuses and on which it depends for its thinking. Thus, although neuroscientists claim to be objective, they tend more often to become obtusely hung up on irrelevant, unhelpful, and sometimes even harmful details. Actors cant afford to be so self-indulgent. In order to duplicate the manner in which a character thinks, they must rely completely on what happens moment to moment on the outside. For example, when they commit to doing an action, they commit to making a change in the outside world, not a change within their own brain (which would be analogous to going for results). In a sense, everything in the brain is designed to become something in the outside world. Thus, if you really want to understand the brain, the more you understand the outside world, the better youll understand the inner world of the brainwhich is more like a reflective mirror in which you have to imagine yourself than a videotape that creates images at which others may gaze. Because neuroscientists have learned so much about the brain in the past few years, theyve used their knowledge more and more to try to change the interior of the brain in order to affect personality and behavior. For example, theyve used various drugs to treat depression or to help patients lose weight. Such a system is like trying to enhance or replace telephone instruments in order to affect and improve the connections between them. Ultimately, the system doesnt work. For anyone who wants to change themselves, change their lifestyle, or change their body image, the place to make the change is in the world; not in the brain or body. When one does Acting Well, one places oneself in the middle of the world. During Morning Preparation, for example, one listens to the world and becomes part of it. One avoids all practices that tend to isolate one from other human beings (who often make noises that would otherwise disturb). By focusing on the outer world, one becomes part of a larger system to which it becomes a joy to conform. What does it matter whether one takes pills to kill ones appetite 133

(which will only returnoften with a vengeance, weeks or months later) or shoots up heroin in order to feel goodtemporarily? Both processes ignore the world, affect the brain directly, and are impatient, ineffective, and ultimately harmful. An actor (especially someone Acting Well) develops patience long enough to let the body and the brain conform to the worlds expectations.

Tobey Maguire
Several days before a friend of mine and I went to The Cider House Rules in January 2000, I had seen a preview of Wonder Boys showing Michael Douglas acting in three or four scenes with Tobey Maguire. Of course Maguires name was spelled out, first time I saw the movie credits; but I remember thinking that there was no way Id ever remember it! (I had no reason to; and there are always too many new things to remember when it comes to films!) Then, on the day I saw The Cider House Rules, I watched the same Wonder Boys preview again and realized that my friend and I were going to see the same actor in the feature film that day. I had seen a preview of The Cider House Rules several times before at the same theatre; and although I must have seen Maguires name each time, I must have refused to make note of it. I generally dont memorize these things because I know Ill fail to recall them after a while. I hate those kinds of failures! So, why bother? (I wasnt aware of it at the time, but I had seen Maguire in This Boy's Life seven years previously, Deconstructing Harry and The Ice Storm four years after that, and Pleasantville last year. But I dont remember him at all from most of those films, and only vaguely from Pleasantville.) During that second viewing of the preview of Wonder Boys, I recognized the actress playing Michael Douglass wife as Frances McDormand. She had looked familiar, but I hadnt been able to place her. I finally remembered her from Fargo and realized how different she looked under more sophisticated circumstances, especially not speaking in her Fargo Midwestern accent, which was part of my own Minnesota heritage, but not of hers. Interestingly, after making Fargo, McDormand said the following: After Blood Simple, everybody thought I was from Texas. After Mississippi Burning, everybody thought I was from Mississippi and uneducated. After Fargo, everybody's going to think I'm from Minnesota, pregnant, and have blonde hair. I don't think you can ever completely transform yourself on film, but if you do your job well, you can make people believe that you're the character you're trying to be. In writing this essay about Tobey Maguire, I finally have created the brand name for McDormand for myself thats independent of the roles that have identified her for other people. Those roles are irrelevant. She is 134

now Frances McDormand and will ever remain so! By the time I finished seeing The Cider House Rules and left the theater with my friend, I had definitely created a space in my brain for Tobey Maguire. Yet I still didnt have a name attached to it! We talked about the film a bit, and I mentioned that actor at which point my friend said, You mean Toby McGuire? (Obviously, my friend didnt spell the name Toby; but I received it spelled wrong; and it was a week before I discussed this very subject with my friend when at last he corrected my spelling!) It was at the very moment when my friend mentioned the actors name that the brand name associated with that actor clicked in. I knew immediately when it happened and what had happened. (It felt a certain way.) Moreover, I knew for sure that I would forever after associate the right name with the right actor. I also knew that this learning incident was an important occasion in the development of my theories about the brain; and that Maguires name would always be associated with these theories (at least for me). Note it was the actors name, and not the Cider House Rules characters, that was important and that stayed with me. (I recall right now that his characters name was Homer Wells in the story; but I remembered it through a process of ratiocination, connecting one memory with another, not a process that involved neurogenesis. I feel Ill probably forget this fact after a while.) Therefore, it wasnt the artistic product that was teaching me something about the actor; it was the marketing of the actor (via the film and its promotion) that taught me the actors name. I believe that while I was watching the film, a learning process was taking place in which one of the address slots that filled was a slot for Toby McGuire. The clicking in was a matter of some simultaneous brain column connections (visual, aural, linguistic, etc.). From that moment on, among other things, I could see the name (in my minds eye) and hear it simultaneously. It wasnt so much the actors face I remembered as it was the brand name. Then, when the spelling correction came, it was a simple matter to substitute Tobey Maguire for Toby McGuire (which Ive done not just by repeating the sounds but by typing this essay, so that the correctly spelled name is in my fingers as well as in my head). From now on, although I may not always be able to recall the actors name when I see his face, Ill never fail to see his face in my minds eye when I hear his name pronounced; or fail to recognize the correct spelling of his name when I see it spelled with the extra e (although I may not recognize it misspelled if I see it). The fact that these memories seem to go in a certain direction, but not necessarily (or, perhaps, ever!) in the opposite direction, confirms the concept that neural column combinations create a sequence of connections that proceeds only in one direction. As I cant recite a poem backwards without extraordinary effort, I cant necessarily recall Tobey Maguires name when I see his picture; but I cant fail to see his picture in my minds eye when I hear or 135

read his name. These facts reveal the direction of the sequence of Tobey Maguires particular neural column combination. I learned Tobey Maguires name after I assigned the neural column combination that corresponded to his face (and awkward teenage manner). I suspect that because the father of Michael Douglas was so famous, my neural column combination for Michael Douglas travels swiftly in the opposite direction from Maguires. If I see his face, I immediately think Son of Kirk Douglas! Unfortunately for him, he attaches to my neural combination for his father. Therefore, for me, no matter how old he gets, Michael Douglas will always be somebodys kid.

Wanna Buy a Cheap Exercise Bicycle?

My friend Stanley will definitely eat himself to death! Hes a millionaire who loves all the wrong things: too much butter, too much fat, and sweet desserts despite serious diabetes in his family. (Dont worry about it! It usually skips a generation, so he claims.) At the end of a meal, when you take away his plate, it leaves behind a round shadow of sugar, salt, and crumbs because hes too vain to wear his glasses to see what hes doing. Bottom Line: hes 57 years old with a really bad potbelly, and now he notices how breathless he gets after every flight of stairs. Finally, his doctor says, Dont you realize youre a prime candidate for a heart attack? So what does he do? He buys one of those exercise bicyclesthe ones with the single wheel, you know, so they dont go anywhere? Of course Stanley has to have the best!with computer lights and every bell and whistle. Over a thousand dollars, he claims he spent. (He forgot when he boasted hed made the deal for eight hundred.) You can pick up a really cheap exercise bicycle in any major city just by following the garbage trucks. Pretty soon, youll come across an exercise machine left out on Garbage Day. Someone bought it, tried it for a week or a couple of weeksif they used it at allthen out the door, into history. Same thing happened to Stanley. At first, hed brag how disciplined he was: Piece of cake, he said. All you do is, you turn on the TV and you smoke a joint. (Stanley never reads.) But its hard, too, he said. You really sweat! I feel great! Stanley felt great for about three weeks. Then he got mad at the thing. Results werent fast enough. He didnt like it any more. Didnt see the point. He thought hed spent too much money, but he figured one of his rich neighbors would pay him to take the exercise bicycle off his hands. He figured wrong. Its a year now and the exercise bicycles still in the bedroom getting in the maids way. Stanleys fatter than ever. 136

Its alarming. It makes you wonder: What went wrong? What went wrong is the subject of this book. Its a book for people like Stanley who are uncertain how to practice self-help techniques (like diets, meditation, or exercise) that require willpower. Unfortunately, when you buy an exercise bicycle or treadmill it doesnt come with instructions on how to maintain a life-long enthusiasm for an admittedly boring and repetitious task. It doesnt come with a personal trainer (or a class or an instructor) to get you over humps of laziness. And it doesnt come with a support group to offer occasional encouragement when you need it. What you usually get is a single appearance by an enthusiastic salesman. Selling Stanley an exercise bicycle is like giving a little boy a real bomb so he can play war with his friends. No matter how tacky a professional machine is made, its not for amateurs! If youre a professional athlete, and you need aerobic exercise, an exercise bicycle might make sense, even if you get bored using it. Youre being paid to be bored, and thats plenty of motivation. However, if youre an amateur, watch out for phony professionalism. Its a chronic problem in America, and it affects how we eat, play, and take care of ourselves. For example, good nutrition begins at the supermarket checkout counter, and probably depends more on whats not in the shopping cart than what is. (If you dont have it, you cant eat it!) A major reason why Americans tend to overeat is the professionalism of food preparation. The food industry fosters this bad influence through marketing, advertising, and packaging. People are encouraged to stock up on groceries as if they were professional chefsto buy for the future for many people, or take advantage of discounts through food couponsand therefore buy a greater variety and greater quantities than they normally would of foods they should only eat sparingly (because the foods are so loaded with sugar and fat). Often the cook winds up consuming the lions share of the wasted calories. Stanley bought his exercise bicycle because he believed it was the best. It made him feel like a real athlete, like a gladiator, for a couple of days. Its sad to think how many millions of men believe they can purchase equipment that will make them look like the hunky models who flex their killer abs and pecs on television. Vanity motivates these men to buy somethingbut not to continue the lifelong, strenuous programs that promise to make them attractive. The badge of professionalism also seems to motivate many of the weekend bikers I see in Central Park wearing Lycra pants and sponsors names on their shirts, and squirting rebottled Evian in their mouths. (I often beat these hot dogs up a hill, even though theyre a generation younger than I am!) Of course, Stanley, in his solitude, would never dress up for a one-wheel bike in his bedroom. He tends to be cheap, and it would cost too much! For Stanley, the truth was bound to come out: hes a schlemiel, not a gladiator. Hes just like the rest of us who arent gladiators. 137

Were amateurs at what we do, no matter how expensive the accouterments with which we gussy up our lives. People who think that starting a new diet or exercise regime from scratch isnt for amateurs need to rethink their assumptions. Professionals dont need new diets or new exercise regimenstheyve probably been eating and exercising properly for years! Only amateurs need to begin something new by, first, acknowledging their beginners status. When amateurs imitate professionals (wearing fancy costumes or trying to use equipment thats inappropriate for them), theyre usually bound to fail. Furthermore, when they seek professional help, they risk being discouraged from too much information thats unnecessary for beginners. However, when newbies acknowledge their amateur status, accept responsibility for their own training, take one day at a time, realize that reaching professional status (which may take years) isnt a necessary goal, theyre much more likely to succeed. A journey is more enjoyable for those who take pleasure from watching the view along the way. It offers much less to those who fall asleep while fantasizing about the final destination. August 1997

The Trip to Narrowsburg

I took two days off from working on this book to attend some business meetings in a small town in Sullivan County, New York (right across the narrow Delaware River from Pennsylvania). Nothing exceptional happened, although I felt I was purposely packing more memories of the town and the large house where we stayed (which I still vividly recall) than I normally would have if my subject werent so often memory. In the two-hour bus ride home, I sat on the left side of the packed vehicle with nothing to do other than rehearse new ways to explain my brain theories. I noticed a fellow sitting to my right, about two seats in front of me, who kept alternating looking out the right window and then the left. It was a little annoying until I suddenly became aware that his left profile would make an excellent candidate for this mornings Closure. I also tried testing, during my more conscious moments, whether his profile seemed to be entering my long-term memory, or whether it would stay in my working memory until it mysteriously shifted positions overnight. As I type this account the following day, I can report that I did, in fact, use his profile for this mornings Closure, exactly as I predicted I would (and it worked fine); and that I can still conjure up his profile now, thereby producing the same feeling I felt yesterday and this morning. (I can only define that feeling as a kind of wistful envy of his youth). 138

I know that his profile did, indeed, become a new neural column combination in my long-term memory at the very moment I noticed his profile. Thus, I believe that three events occurred simultaneously: (1) I became conscious of his profile (which consciousness consisted of continual reverberant loopings); (2) I identified preprogrammed neural columns pointing at the referents that composed his profile; and (3) I activated a new combination of those same preprogrammed columns located in my long term memory so that that combination will now forever be identified with that young mans profile. (I know I shall never forget that profileparticularly if I ever read this paragraph again! I believe it will come back to meas many such memories come backwhenever its called forth, for the rest of my lifeproviding I use it every once in a while.) One new thing I learned was about the nature of the neural column combinations. Although I keep applying the old prevailing theory of the mind to these newly perceived phenomena, this time I could better sense the precision basis of how a column combination is selected. It is not (as I know intellectually, but often neglect to keep in mind) inscribed on a tabula rasa. Rather, the process is like the lining up of cross hairs in a viewfinderexcept in more than two or three dimensions. This lining-up process pinpoints a precise location (or zip code) according to the pre-assigned address that is identified by the referents making up a retinal image or other incoming data. I could (and still can) feel the precise method of the pinpointing process. When I casually try to conjure up the column combination, the image is unclear. However, I can immediately focus it, simply by trying; and the precision pinpointing takes place immediately. I believe that the original perception and the memory of the perception apply exactly the same precision process to exactly the same column combination. As I try to recall the elements of my memory of the young mans profile, I can count the following seven (not necessarily in the following order):

He was on the right side of my vision. I could see his profile from time to time (but not the whole time). His skin was clear, white, and youthful (and therefore lovable as opposed to strange and threatening). The shape of his nose reminded me of my fathers nose. The shape of his lips reminded me of how I believe my own profile appears to other people.

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His hat reminded me of a sailors hat (but with an Australians turned-up brim). His thin, high eyebrows reminded me of my mothers penciled-on eyebrows.

I believe these seven reminders constitute at least seven columns of a dedicated neural combination somewhere in my outer cortex that now remembers this young mans profile. (I have no idea, and probably could not recognize, what he would look like full on.) I also believe that this entirely introspective, subjective, and therefore non-scientific experiment proves that there is no such thing as working memory as that concept is currently understood. Consciousness is the process of pinpointingthat is, perceiving, recognizing, or rememberinga particular sequence of referents that make up a neural combination. The purpose of consciousness is to accomplish that process. What goes on in working memory involves the reverberant process of consciousness, the objective of which is to match the proper neural combination to the appropriate external phenomena. The other realization I had was how wrong-headed American customs of preparing and eating food can be. There were five of us staying in Narrowsburg. The night before last, Andy, who is the editor of a food magazine (and obviously a fine cook), prepared a pork roast and a vegetable dish while his wife Lizzy prepared a large dish of mashed potatoes (about half of which were left over the following morning, thus becoming my breakfast). Dinner was delicious; but there was too much of it. There were, as usual, the extra mounds of food that went with the pork (that is, the mashed potatoes and the vegetables). Even though there was neither salad nor dessert, I believe that we all ate too much (I know I did!) simply because of the American custom of how we prepare, serve, and eat food. It occurred to me how sensible it would be if the five of us were all Acting Well aficionados! We could have prepared a tasty pasta dish (or whatever), perhaps sharing new possibilities of compliant breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, and never overeating. It was a rare opportunity entirely lost! Andys probably in his early 40s. From the appearance of a bit of extra weight around his tumwhich he certainly doesnt need, unless I can convert him to the ways of Acting Well, I predict that in ten years hell be unacceptably overweight. Stay tuned.

The Constancy of the Self

An experiment that you really should do!

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Place yourself in front of a mirror. Stare straight into the center of one eye (whichever eye you favor). Look at your ear, then return to stare straight into your eye. Look at your nose, then return to stare straight into your eye. Look at your forehead, your eye, your ear, your eye, your nose, your eye, etc.

While looking away, then coming back to stare into your eye, ask yourself the following questions: Is that an eye I see, or an image of an eye? Whose eye? Mine or the mirrors? Where is the eye I see: in my brain, in my mind, in my imagination, in the glass, in my face, in the idea of an eye, or in the idea of a mirror? Touch the mirror and ask yourself: Which is more real: the eye I see or the glass I touch? Which is more real: the glass I touch or the silver behind the glass? Can I see the glass at the same time I see the eye? Do I know that person? Is that person real? Is that person the same person as the person looking at that person? Is it a person? Is it just an image of a person? Do I think I can ever really see reality? Am I disturbed by these questions? Note that every time you return to look at your eye, its as if your eye never moved. However, you know it moved! If someone else watched you, theyd see it move. If you watched a videotape of yourself, youd see it move. However, when you look in the mirror, youll never, ever see the looking eye move! Not the slightest bit! Your consciousness, or your sense of being aware of yourself, is like looking at your eye in a mirror. Whenever you see or sense it, its there exactly as it was the last time you sensed it. However, when you look away you never see it relax its vigilance, although you know, rationally, that it has cycled off. How many times a day do you seriously think about yourself? How many times a day do you stare at yourself in a mirror? When you shave or put on makeup? When you brush your teeth? Thats maybe two or three times a day. All of us experience only scattered flashes of consciously looking in the mirror and seeing our eyes, and yet we think our consciousness is in a constant state. That constant but non-existent state is a virtual consciousness. Its assumed to be there, but it isnt always there. The illusion of its being there (by virtue of the fact that it ought to be there) is precisely the illusory nature of the constancy of the conscious self. When you become conscious of yourself, youre simply stepping 141

into a medium for information to cross. That information may be useful or not; but the medium is just a medium. It may be a mirror or it may be a form of concentration: a focusing on yourself. Dont think, therefore, that if you awaken the looking eye of your brain to gaze into the mirror of self-consciousness that youre witnessing an unchangeable thing thats always there. The constancy is an illusion. Its virtual. The French philosopher Henri Bergson theorized about the relationship between the mind and the body, and believed that mathematical or mechanical interpretations of the world were not necessarily the most accurate. He showed that you cant measure the experienced flow of duration (which he called dur), nor predict how human personalities will express themselves as they evolve in that flow. Most theologians, on the other hand, believe in an immutable soul thats always the same. We assume they mean we have a constant, unvarying personality. The reason people believe in this constancy of the self is that consciousness fools the minds eye in the same way the mirror fools the real eye. Like the eye in the mirror, the self never moves. It remains exactly the same, always staring at us when we look at it as if it had never moved when we were not looking at it. Consider how seldom we seriously look into ourselves. When we do look carefully, what we see is ourselves looking; and that experience is like looking at our eye in the mirror. What we see seems to be unvarying. But that unvaryingness, that dur, is the same kind of illusion as the apparent stillness of the looking eye. If your conscious self is constant only as long as you maintain your concentration, how constant is your soul? If you lose custody of your soul when youre dead, do you maintain custody of it while you sleep? Or is the soul a virtual, inconstant thing we like to talk about, as evanescent as the conscious self? Or, if the soul is constant, whats it made of? If the soul is made out of mind or brain tissue, then its constancy would be just as virtualthat is to say, evanescentas that of the conscious self. Theres no more advantage to looking deep into ourselves than there is looking at ourselves in a mirror. The experiment is interesting, baffling, and surprising. We have simply stepped into a medium for information to cross. The information may be useful or not, but the medium is just a medium. It may be a mirror or it may be a form of concentration, a focusing on ourselves. Dont think, therefore, that if you awaken the looking eye of your brain to gaze into the mirror of self-consciousness that you have discovered an immutable thing. The immutability is an illusion. Your personhood is constant only as long as you maintain your gaze. This realization may be useful in understanding consciousness. Functional science (when it tries to measure consciousness) videotapes, as it were, the gazing eye and sees it move. The neuroscientist who reports his or her durability of personhood is merely offering anecdotal evidence, not sufficient to prove anything. But of course 142

that scientists anecdotal evidence is not wrong simply because its anecdotal. Its wrong because the eye moves! There is no durable personhood. There is no constancy of the self.

A Personal History
Ive been practicing a self-help technique (which someone else named Acting Well) for more than 40 years. Thats a hell of a long time to be practicing the same self-help routine! Acting Well didnt start out having anything to do with acting, health, or losing weight. What happened was that, as a writer, I couldnt stand holding a pen in my hand and finding myself with nothing interesting to write. At times, ideas would tumble out with no intervention. Those were the good times. However, whenever Id intervene or force an issue, a whole project might start to poop out. My willpower, it seems, wasnt only useless; it could be diabolically destructive! After 40 years of trial and error, I finally analyzed and learned how to correct the problem. During the same period, I came to realize that actors have analogous difficulties. If theyre even slightly willful during a performance, the audience catches on immediately and refuses to suspend disbelief. Not only that, but people trying to discipline themselves, whether theyre smokers or overeaters, also lack willpower. The minute they come to the point where its a real chore to adhere to a rigorous diet, they fail. No ones immune to this phenomenon! I havent met a single thin person (which I happen to be, thankfully) who claims to be thin because of willpower. I certainly am not! I finally concluded that willpower doesnt exist. My conviction about this conclusion was considerably strengthened when I read about the seminal work of Benjamin Libet (a neuroscientist with whom Ive subsequently corresponded). By recording, years ago, the neuronal reactions to various stimuli in the exposed brains of subjects who were undergoing operations that are no longer performed, Libet established that the will to lift your finger occurs after your finger lifts itself. Apparently, immediately after you lift your finger, the feeling that you were the cause of lifting your finger is a mere illusion. More precisely, you make a reasonable assumption (or rationalization) that you willed your finger to lift. In other words, if your finger lifted, you must have lifted it. To believe otherwise would upset most people. Nevertheless, willpower turns out to be an illusion. What causes your finger to lift is mere habit. In situations that are similar to the one in which you just lifted your finger, you always lifted your finger. These situations are too complicated for your conscious brain to keep track of, or to make decisions by; therefore, 143

your unconscious brain makes them for you. The process is so simple that you do it all the time. The fact that youre not aware of the process doesnt negate its universal application. Any choice you make any choice at allis one youre bound to make, given the circumstances. (If the human brain had to debate the desirability of this choice or that before acting, the forerunners of the human race would have gone extinct a million years ago.) You may think that every situation is different, and that you have to make creative choices all the time to which Libets Paradox (which is what I call it) dont apply. Of course, every situation is unique in some respect or other. However, your brain cleverly breaks down every situation into enough component parts with which youre entirely familiar (at least seven of them, each of which can lead to seven more, etc.). The parts are collated, as it were; and their average outcome or response is the action youll take. Its entirely a foregone conclusion. You have no choice! You must do what the nearly instantaneous calculations of your brain dictate. _________________________________ Although weve all been raised to think we possess willpower, but the idea that you can force yourself to be strong in the face of temptation is as stupid as trying to force yourself to be strong enough to lift a 500-pound weight repeatedly! Unless youve practiced weight lifting for a very long time, youll never manage it. Willpower is supposed to be a measure of some kind of moral strength; and strengthwhether moral or physicalcan only be achieved through practice, not desire. This idea is especially pertinent for people who want to achieve a particular goal without having to work for itfor example, to lose weight instantly, without exercise, and while continuing to eat terrible food they happen to love; or for actors who want to rehearse too few hours for a film or a play; or for writers who want to create between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. exactly. Such rigorous schedules never work. An actor who wants to react a certain way to an onstage stimulus cant will the reaction. However, if the actor simply rehearses the reaction often enough (figuring out why the character would behave in a way consistent with the play), there wont be a problem during the performance. However, if the actor wills the reaction without preparing properly, the result will be what acting teachers call indicating or going for resultswhich an actor must never do. Amateur actors often dont understand how much preparation is required to act a role. Thats why theyre usually terrible. They would achieve by means of will what can only be achieved through habit. Such magic never works! Only simple practice will suffice. Nevertheless, everybody sometimes foolishly expects that desire alone (if only its strong enough!) will substitute for the hard work that serious practice entails. 144

Therefore, if I prepare myself as the writer (through whatever exercise or preparation I chooseit doesnt seem to matter which), I strengthen my creative powers. Theres no need to force the good ideas to flow. They come on their own simply because my brain is used to getting creative when I prepare it properly. Thus, for 20 years or so, Ive never had a case of writers block. I practice my little rituals, and the results always come. Those rituals became the basis of Acting Well. Now other people can perform these same rituals in order to practice and thereby become a creative artist, a confirmed non-smoker, a thin person, a brilliant Hamlet, or whatever dream they want.

FAQ: How Do I Get Myself to Exercise?

What They say: Start slowly and progress gradually. If sedentary, incorporate a few minutes of physical activity into your day, building up gradually to 30 minutes of additional physical activity. Be more physically active throughout your day by taking the stairs more, parking a little farther away, doing yard work, or playing actively with the kids. Try variety. Vary your walking or jogging routes or participate in exercise classes to help keep you motivated. Include family and friends. Sharing your activities will help you stay on track. Keep a record of progress. A simply diary of your physical activity is a well-proven behavioral change strategy. Enjoy yourself. Activities that are fun are most likely to be activities for life.

If you are a man over the age of 45 or a woman over age 55 and/or if you have heart disease or two or more cardiac risk factors such as high blood pressure or cigarette smoking, you should consult with a physician before starting a program more vigorous than walking. _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: The problem with these Tips to Get You Going (by Kyle J. McInnis, ScD and James M. Rippe, MD, published in a Time Magazine Special Advertising Feature promoting health products and services) is that they fail to address the psychological issues that any person beginning an exercise program for the first time must confront. 145

Thus, although the techniques proposed above are logical and sensible, theyre more appropriate for teaching children how to read or do homework, for example, or some other onerous activity a child has to get through. In other words, theyre instructions from a puppetmaster to a puppet. Psychologically, however, what you need to do is to develop a set of techniques that would be appropriate for a self-taught high school graduate. Its a whole different ball game. (Start slowly) No. Exercise your body as hard as you comfortably can (which may be very little at the beginning). As long as you touch the envelope but dont push the envelope, you wont hurt yourself. For some people, brisk walking may be too fastat first. Those people may have to walk slowly at first and slowly build up strength. But heythey have years to perfect their sport! Trust your body to tell you when youre touching the envelope. It wont take you long to figure out your limits, even if it takes you years to extend them. Avoid doctors and advisors who dont trust you to judge your own limits. (Be more active) Dont count walking to the parking lot, climbing a few more stairs, doing yard work, or playing with the kids as fitness activities. Theyre not regular enough, and they rarely let you touch the envelope. Worse, psychologically speaking, you should never let occasional miscellaneous and unscheduled activities (especially ones that involve other people) lull you into thinking youre getting fitter. Quite the contrary! These activities will get harder and harder if you extend a sedentary lifestyle into your later yearswhich practically every American will do. Only a specific fitness activity practiced 30 minutes per day can counterbalance a sedentary lifestyle that will continue for the rest of your life. With regular fitness, after a few months or years youll begin to notice that the miscellaneous activities listed above get easier and easier, even though youre getting oldernot because youre doing them often, but because youre practicing regular fitness exercises in order to make everything else easier. In other words, if youre sedentary now, youll continue to be sedentary for the rest of your life. Its okay as long as you touch the envelope every day for six minutes out of a 30-minute daily fitness exercise routine. (Try variety) You cant establish and maintain a regular fitness exercise habit by varying your activities! Period!

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(Include family and friends) You cant establish your own personal daily fitness exercise habit if you have to depend on other people to join you! Period! (Keep a record of progress) You should keep a daily Acting Well log, of course; and you should conscientiously record the start and stop times of your daily fitness exercise. However, what is the point of recording your progress? What is progress? What good will it do to write it down? You will generally remember that you can now run the same distance in 26 minutes that used to take you 35. Thats all you need to know. The truth is, after six months, you may feel youve reached the top of your form. Youll have no idea how much farther you can keep on going over the next three yearsor the next ten! Whats important is that you practice a fitness exercise every day, not that you practice it well at first. Its also important that you understand that recording your progress is a puppetmasters technique for motivating puppets. You are not a puppet. (Enjoy yourself) The fact is, you cant begin to enjoy a fitness exercise right away. Its like the phenomenon that most husbands and wives cant really enjoy each other until they stop equating sexual satisfaction with love. Looking for fun activities is another puppetmasters technique. It gives rise to some spectacularly interesting activities (which sell quite well, by the way!) that people try for a while and then abandon. In other words, most of these fun activities have no lasting value! For some people, runningwhich is far from a fun activity at first!may become supremely enjoyable after a few years of getting good at it. Therefore, dont look to have fun at first. You may rule out the very activities that are best for you. Make your choices based on convenience, practicality, and effectiveness. (Consult a doctor) Usually, you dont need medical advice to get started on the right exercise program. These disclaimers get puppetmasters off the hook. If you have a heart attack while jogging on Day One, you cant sue the puppetmasters if they warned you to consult a doctor and you didnt. Always use common sense in these matters.

Monotony
Its not a bad thing to eat by yourself; nor is it a good thing. However, it is a good thing to break bread with other people and to make eating a social experience. 147

Similarly with exercise: its not a bad thing to exercise alone in your own home. Nor is it a good thing. However, it is a good thing to exercise out of doors, or amongst other people in a health club, even if the other people are strangers. Why are social things better? For one thing, fresh air is better for you than the stale air of an apartment (even if you only get the fresh air while youre on your way to the gym). Another advantage of getting out is that its much easier to exercise daily when you have to leave home to do it. For example, the will to leave your premises concentrates on transitional processessuch as changing clothes, taking an elevator or stairway, and similar rituals that are relatively easy to do and that commit you totally to the task by the time you complete them. By the time you get to where you begin to exercise strenuously, youre completely ready. Theres no need to force you to do it. In other words, its inconceivable that once you reach the gym youll suddenly decide to turn back and not exercise! Its during preparation times that exercises greatest pleasures happen. Since your concentration will be totally affected by the exercise task while youre doing it, you wont feel the pleasures of doing it as keenly as you will before or after you exercise. Your life is like a play; and you should think of your work, your meals, and your exercise as major parts of your daily scenario, the object of which is to act well. Costumes are important in every play, and if you have a special insignia to wear on your sports clothes when you exercise in public, the pride you feel in identifying yourself as acting well will only enhance your performance. The other people in your play are not the audience but your fellow actors. They may be members of your family or strangers on the street or at the gym. You dont perform for these people; you perform with them, which means that they rely on you in the same way that you rely on them to give a consistent performance. If you know what to expect, your performance will run more smoothly than if youre suspicious of your fellow players motives or troubled by their actions. Sports etiquette is especially important during fitness exercises becausealthough you dont realize ityou may adversely affect the performances of other players. If you run, skate, or bike faster than a person in front of you, be sensitive to that persons feelings if you have to pass. For example, dont prove how much better you are by slowing down (or conversing loudly with companions) after youve passed a person three times your age. You may diminish the testosterone levels that person has just worked hard to elevate, while proving nothing neither more nor less than that youre an asshole. Its the aim of every fine actor to give consistent performances every time. This consistency depends on the actor making the same choices during each performance. During the rehearsal period, the actor can get better and better at doing each specific choice until the en148

tire performance is under control. Only then, can a performance rise to the level of art, when the actor is acting well. Similarly, your choice of what you eat every day, and when you prepare and eat it; and what you do for exercise, should be totally under your control. You should go through a period of rehearsals, early on, during which you learn how to prepare your meals and get skilled at whatever fitness exercise you choose (which should therefore be an exercise at which your skills can constantly improve obviously, jogging isnt one of the best of them!). Once youve mastered the rudiments of your choice, you can then go on to a lifetime (or at least many years) of performing the same choices and getting better and better at them until eventually youre at your peak, doing the best you can. As you improve, youll begin to notice and feel that youre part of a community of people who are making choices in a manner similar to your own (although the specific choices they make may be different from yours). When you can look at the world in this way, youll realize that your days of ordering or preparing something different for dinner every night (so you or your family dont get bored) are over. You may no more eat that way than an actor may decide to do something different every night on Broadway. The actors fellow players would be furious! Indeed, the play might collapse. For example, Herbert Berghof used to tell a story about appearing on Broadway with George C. Scott in The Andersonville Trial. On the opening night, Scott, who had consistently given almost inaudible, laid-back performances during rehearsals, suddenly stole the show with an exhibition of outrageous histrionics, thereby ruining Berghofs performance. If you lived in solitary confinement in a prison, youd certainly want to alter as much as you could, from day to day, to fight against boredom and the psychic damage that can come from extreme isolation. However, if you live in a community, and are sensitive to its pleasures, youll fare better if you create a scenario for yourself thats consistent from day to day, from meal to meal, and from exercise to exercise. Once you experience this kind of control over your life (avoiding the advice given to you by self-appointed nutritional experts as much as you would avoid going to the same restaurant night after night and eating only food from the same menu), youll find that every performance is different and requires creative solutions to unanticipated variationsdespite the fact that youre trying to follow a consistent scenario that other people may attack as monotonous.

Diets and Nutrition

Use of the word diet (like exercise) should be restricted to temporary medical and therapeutic cures. 149

The idea of being on a permanent health food diet is an oxymoron. If youre not sick, you dont need to go on a diet. It would be like taking antibiotics lifelong. Its a wrong attitude. Diets give you psychologically unhealthy feelings about eating and food. One major problem with diets is that they can make food as irresistibly attractive as the kind of evil that generates guilt. The whole concept of a diet is that of a temporary punishment. Rather, you should seek permanent rewards. Diets are about what not to eat and what not to door about what to substitute for nots. In other words, theyre restrictive. Theres no positive action involved. When puppetmasters invent diets, they tend to prepare a Procrustean bed for everyone: how many calories, how many servings of fruit and vegetables. Food pyramids. All standardized. You wont die if you fail to pay attention. Current dietary ideas are based on medieval concepts when people ate one meal per day. Therefore, some nutritionists will advise you to include fruit, vegetables, protein, carbohydrates, etc., at every meal in order to have three balanced meals per day. They will also expect you to want to have an appetizer, main course, and dessert for lunch as well as dinner. Such directions inevitably increase the intake. You should think in terms of an entire days menu. In other words, plan one meal per day that is divided into three courses: breakfast, lunch, and dinner (or, better: Breakfast, Lunch 1, and Lunch 2). You should eat a variety of foods spaced out over the day that include the nutrients you believe your body requires. In order to determine which nutrients your body requires, and the proper amounts of those nutrients (such as the size of portions) you may have to experiment over a period of months to notice on which days you feel your best, and how your menu can bring and keep you close to your optimal weight. To get the proper nutrients each day, you may have to eat more food than your system is used to. Therefore, you may gain weight you dont want. The solution is to touch the envelope during your daily fitness exercise, thereby expending enough calories to metabolize the extra food. Thus, your weight should have nothing to do with the amount of food you eat once you begin touching the envelope daily. You should never be hungry once you get on a regular menu system and have no reasonable way to satisfy hunger except to go out of the house and buy more food. If you wish you were thinner, and your menu (combined with your daily fitness exercise) makes you gain weight, then remove two courses from your daily menu. If your menu (combined with daily exercise) makes you stay at the same weight, but you still want to be thinner, remove one course from your daily menu. When you have achieved your optimal weight, restore the missing course(s) to your menu until you achieve an ideal balance. (This process isnt difficult!) Youll constantly hear new information as to the nutrients the av150

erage body is alleged to require. Dont pay too much attention to this information. Some of it will change over time. Some of it will simply be alarmist (most likely to benefit a scientist by justifying a foundation grant) and wont apply to you. Be skeptical. Dont rely on dietary supplements. They should not be necessary if you plan your menu properly. Dont try to balance every meal within itself. For example, you may wish to eat your vegetables only at lunch and your bread only at breakfast. Each days menu should be approximately (or exactly) the same as the next. Dont try to divide nutrients over several days (having broccoli on Mondays, spinach on Tuesdays, etc.). Such schedules give you too much to remember and are too complicated to fulfill. Youll also lose control of your menu that way, and constantly be faced with decisions, variety, counting calories, exceptions, rewards, too large portions, bread and butter with meals, etc., all leading inexorably to lifelong obesity. Your daily menu should be permanent. However, you may wish to choose from a selection of two or three dinner entrees during the week; but those entrees should be part of a permanent repertoire. Any changes to your menu should evolve over long periods of time. When you go to the store to stock up on food, provide yourself only with what you need for your menu for the next few days. Dont buy more than you plan to eat. If you buy just enough food to make reasonable portions, you wont be tempted to cheat. (If you dont buy it, you cant eat it!) Thus, achieving your optimum weight begins and ends at the market. Everything you have to do to stay on a nutritional routine you must do in a store. By the time food hits your table its too late. Always eat everything on your plate at every meal, and know that youll eat everything on your plate at every meal so that youre never tempted to eat overlarge portions. Leftovers signal bad planning. They should never exist in your kitchen! Dont prepare food for guests more than once a week if it gives you an excuse not to stick to your menu. When going to a restaurant, people tend to choose whats pleasurable. Therefore, give in to pleasure when you go out to eat. However, dont eat out more than once a week (or twice a week once a month). That way the amount of food you consume out will not be more than 6% of the weeks total. Nothing you do under those circumstances will harm you. This system is a foolproof system to achieve your optimum weight. Diets never work. This system never fails! Good health is not a disease.

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Losers
(Proposal for a Television Series) Losers will be a syndicated series of Reality TV programs about weight loss. The programs are designed to be run Monday through Friday in a particular local or national market. Although the series will obviously spoof the Survivor series, it will also show the state of the art of the weight loss industry, which is currently under a long-term investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The series will document the six-month-long successes and failures of two weight loss groups, pitting each against the other, with the winning group dividing a substantial prize (such as $10,000 dollars per person) between its members. Each group will be assembled from a heterogeneous group of 4 overweight people so that the weight of the entire group is 700 pounds, and the collective goal weight is approximately 500 pounds. At the end of six months, the entire group will be weighed, and the lowest collective score will win. Each group will be kept in the dark as to how theyre doing relative to any other group, at least until the series ends. They may think that there are as many as ten groups meeting (whereas there will be only two); and at the end of the series, each member will be paid $10,000, win or lose. The first group will be a control Weight Watchers group. The second group will be as identical to the first as possible, but will undergo behavior modification training. Both groups will be participating in a bona fide double blind clinical trial supervised by a recognized group of medical doctors and scientists. Fairness will require that the series be shrouded in secrecy until the programs are actually broadcast. The series group dynamics will get most interesting if some members want to drop out of the competition (thereby ending their struggle to lose weight). The remaining members of the group will have the opportunity to argue with each dropout to go back on the diet. If a dieter returns to his or her original weight, that person will be expelled from the group permanently (lest he or she gain more weight, and ruin the groups chances even further!). His or her original weight will be added to the total from that point on, and his or her prize money will be forfeited to be divided amongst the remaining group members. Thus, there will be an interesting approachavoidance conflict between individuals to keep members dieting or to encourage them to get out of the group. The groups will meet on different days of the week in a local television station that will videotape the sessions and provide other production and editing facilities. Several location interviews will be arranged with other groups, 152

and with various experts in the field of motivation, particularly several neuroscientists in California. In addition to following the trials and tribulations of various characters, their struggles with weight, and their conflicts with each other trying to keep each others weight down (so as to be able to share the big prize), each program will cover one or more special aspects of weight loss. The following is a tentative list of subjects that could be covered:

SUPPORT GROUPS (Weight Watchers, etc., especially leadership and group dynamics; pep talks; charismatic leaders, weigh in for Jesus; computerized support groups over the Internet) FOOD THEORIES AND SYSTEMS (Conflicts between various diets, such as Pritikin, the Ornish diet, the Atkins Diet, Macrobiotics, etc.; the complexities of counting calories, points, fat grams, etc.) FAD DIETS (illegal and quasi-legal methods, including the contemptible practice of appealing to peoples appetites in order to get them to buy and eat chocolate-flavored candy bar snacks in order to lose weight) SHOPPING (the struggle between the need for variety and the need for consistency; avoiding temptation while choosing among 35,000 items available in one food emporium; health food stores and the inability for a human being to ingest all the possible healthy foods that proponents claim are essential) FOOD DISTRIBUTION AND SERVICE (for example, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, ZonePerfect, and MenuDirect food systems; fast food chains; restaurant menus and portion sizes) FAMILIES (the difficult group dynamics within several families in which one member is struggling to stay on a diet; how dieters manage restaurants, feasts, and holiday meals socially) NUTRITIONISTS (challenges to unscientifically proven advice currently being given out by professional nutritionists, such as: keep healthy food around for snacking; eat as many as five meals per
153

day in order to balance blood sugar levels; vary your diet throughout the week in order to ingest as many of the nutrients as you might need; eat a balanced dinner every night; and the USDAs food pyramid scheme) FITNESS AND PHYSICAL TRAINERS (aerobics videotapes and health clubs that prey on the ignorant; challenges to unscientifically proven advice currently being given out by professional trainers, such as: you must include flexibility, strength, and endurance training in addition to aerobic exercise in each session; and the American Heart Associations recent misinformed recommendation that one should exercise most days of the week) COMPLIANCE (doctors insights into patient compliance; support group members conflicts with such disciplinary issues as the Trevose Behavior Modification System, which ejects any member who fails to obey its weight loss rules and regulations, retains no more than 10% of the original sign-ups, and claims 100% efficacy) MENTAL GYMNASTICS (transcendental meditation, yoga, mind over fatness; its okay to be fat) WILL POWER (experiments and interviews with eminent neuroscientists expounding upon recent theories that explain why there is no such thing as willpower) DOCTORS (and various medications available for weight loss) CHILDREN (According to Current Opinion in Pediatrics [August, 1999], Obesity is arguably the most important medical problem in America today. As part of the overall problem, about 25% of children are considered either overweight or obese.)

Report on Albert
Albert, who is 80 years old, has been going to North Carolina annually for 20 years to lose weight, although hes gone less fre154

quently for the past few years. He generally goes once or twice a year. His insurance plan doesnt cover the expense, although for special medical treatments Medicare would. (Since Alberts wealthy, he doesnt mind the expense.) The retreat he goes to is at Duke University Medical Center. It was started by a doctor who believed that after a heart attack a person should exercise and eat properly to avoid recurrence. This doctor set up a preventive unit located in the sports stadium where there was exercise and an indoor and outdoor track. (Albert doesnt use the track because he finds it distasteful.) They also have treadmills, bicycles, and free weights. The center was originally called DUPAC standing for Duke University Preventive Approach to Cardiology. Pepsi-Cola gave millions for a gymnasium. A wealthy donor gave money for an experimental nutritional center and clinical building. These buildings are now called Duke Center for Living. The Center is open for locals who come from within 30-50 miles away for $1,500/year and treat the place like an inexpensive health club. Its much more than a health club, however. There are medical personnel there (someone with a defibrillator, for example; or a Registered Nurse to take blood samples occasionally and blood pressure and pulse rate every morning). They also have academically trained physical therapists. Duke has a very expensive center, but Albert believes it isnt profitable. In fact, he thinks its been a financial failure, although it may help to act as a feeder for the hospital. The Center operates retreats for regulars like Albert. They offer meditation or yoga, and medical education. He also says they take people on a field trip to a supermarket to show how stores tempt you and how to shop according to a list. They also take people on an outing to a restaurant to show how to order Chinese food without monosodium glutamate and salt. Duke also has a Diet and Fitness Center mainly for overweight women. (They offer behavioral psychology programs to help people modify behavior or explain why theyre not exercising. It costs extra.) Alberts Center is mostly for men with open-heart zippers. (Albert has no heart problems, but has an ominous family history.) There seem to be political problems between the various centers. Albert understands that hell be eating evening meals at a local YMCA probably because his Center cant afford to feed him dinner. Theres a third Center at Duke thats 50 years old. It was started by an internist who created the non-salt Rice Diet that became successful when it brought about miracle cures for diabetics, such as restoring sight to blind patients. Albert (who is an exceptionally successful retired businessperson) feels that although his Center is the best, it hasnt been marketingoriented and therefore failed to make money. He says the marketing 155

people they hired are incompetent. For example, the head of the Center is a medical doctor who has no talent for business. Albert mentioned other programs that are much more expensive, such as Pritikin in California and Dr. Kenneth Cooper (who created the Air Force exercise plan). Also Dr. Ornish. Kenneth Cooper is very expensive compared to what Albert pays (which includes the $50/day cost of a nearby hotel and a car rental of $1,000 for the month). It costs Albert $1,500 for the month. (He buys a years membership and uses it only for one month.) Albert claims that the Center denies him nothing, although it counts calories and fat grams. He loses about 3 pounds a week based on a 1,000 calorie diet per day. He also walks ten miles, which equals the loss of 1,000 calories (100 C/mile). Therefore, its as if hes fasting. At Alberts Centers in the past, there have been occasional afternoon lectures by doctors. They once showed Albert the clogged veins of a cadaver! They have a 100-200-seat auditorium with a demonstration kitchen. Pepsi built them a pool about 4 feet deep for arthritics. Albert gets three personal training sessions a week @ $40/session. (He pays $75 at Equinox!) Besides the walking, Albert gets floor exercises for flexibility, balance, and pool sessions, and sessions on how to use the weights. Albert doesnt do running because hes afraid it will aggravate his osteoarthritis. When he first started the bicycle he was at Level 1 (pulse rate between 10 and 20). Then he graduated to Level 3 (110). He says he wont sweat until he reaches 120. He hasnt gotten there yet. (He used to own an exercise bicycle but got rid of it.) He goes three times per week to Equinox (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday). He finds it distasteful; but he hires a personal trainer who keeps him coming back. Without the personal trainer, he says hed drop out. A personal trainer once treated his osteoarthritis by pushing back his legs (overstretching his muscles), pushing on his legs until the pain level reached around 8.5 on a 10-point scale. After three sessions, the pain was gone! His gait is now normal. Albert feels that when he stopped drinking for a medical problem he lost the taste for it and may not resume. Drinking made it hard not to gain back the weight he lost at the Center. Albert should weigh 150-160 but normally weighs 185. He will lose about 12 pounds at the Center. He expects to gain it back. I believe the reason he gains back the weight is that his wife is his cook. She serves family style and he cant resist seconds and thirds. She apparently pays no attention to his special needs. April 2000

156

Acting Well (The Book Proposal)

One can only marvel at the phenomenal number of diet and exercise breakthroughs and self-improvement programs sold in bookstores and via informercials. Everywhere one sees another Guide for the Perplexed that tells people how to live. All these books promise The Answer. Yet, despite thousands of diet books available, 150-million Americans continue to carry around an extra 20 pounds they dont need. 37-million Americans suffer from eating disorders. 61-million Americans smoke cigarettes. The members of every fourth American family, involving 88million people, have to cope with someone affected by alcohol or drug-related problems that cost insurers, governments, and businesses over $220 billion annually. Acting Well takes a novel approach to self-help books. Based on the idea that the only self-help books that can permanently change someones life are the ones that people write themselves, Acting Well shows how to spend a small part of every day composing compulsory notes and optional essays for ones own book. The work may never be completed, but the lifelong project will continually sustain the willpower to live a more disciplined, creative, self-assured, and healthy life. Acting Well is a simple but precise application of acting techniques promulgated by Konstantin Stanislavski a century ago. These techniques can focus the psyche through conscious observation and choices that become automatic, healthy responsesas opposed to repeating unhealthy or inappropriate behavior patterns day after day. Anyone can become psychologically addicted to habitual choices. Although unhealthy patterns (a tendency to binge, for example) may not involve the physiological addiction problems that heroin presents, the compulsion to revert may be overwhelming after only a three to six week starvation diet (which is any diet that limits a person to less than 1,200-1,500 calories per day) that seemed to work well at the beginning. Thats why, although many self-help books can alert readers to the problems and techniques of behavior modification, at the end of the day the effects of all their good advice usually die along with the readers initial good intentions. The power of Acting Well isnt in its advice (although theres lots of it!) but in its ability to motivate healthy actions in a way thats similar to how Stanislavski techniques make actors performances possible onstage. The book can appeal to everyones taste, since almost everyone has acted, if not professionally, then at least in school or amateur theatricals. Therefore, practically anyone will intuitively understand how Hamlets observation that All the worlds a stage, and all the men and women merely players applies to developing effective new techniques for behavioral change. Many self-help manuals teach their readers little more than how 157

to hypnotize themselves in order to achieve certain temporary objectives. Acting Well, on the other hand, helps people achieve a greater degree of wellness, not by fooling themselves, but by exercising self-control through habitual practice. In other words, all the willpower in the world wont help an actor cry onstage or tighten his belt three notches. However, by using various simple techniques well known to actors, tears can flow and pounds can melt. Readers who will want to buy the book will include, first of all, people who are creative but have self-disciplinary problems, such as writers block, problems getting started, or day-after problems when doubts overwhelm talent. The techniques in Acting Well were invented long ago to overcome precisely these problems. As incredible as it sounds, when practiced properly, these techniques are 100% effective. They have never failed in more than 30 years. One of the techniques featured in Acting Well is similar to the Morning Pages of Julia Camerons The Artists Way. This popular book, which concentrates on creative issues (not health problems), suffers from the same weakness that plagues most diet books: people start doing the exercises, but they dont continue them for long. For example, Amazon.com has published a number of positive readers responses to Camerons best-selling book; but when some of the readers who appended their E-mail addresses to their reviews were asked how long they continued to practice Morning Pages, they admitted to stopping after two to three months. Unfortunately, theres no simple answer to the problem of willpower. For example, the typical advice (published recently in the New York Times) that comes out of one study of people who had lost weight and kept it off was Youve got to find it for yourself. And dont spend money on it. Slimfast, Optifast, you cant live like that forever. In other words, no one gains willpower by buying products (including books) that supposedly make self-discipline clear and easy. But if you write your own self-help bookeven publishing for likeminded readers as you go along (which is a technique now possible on the Internet)you can create an extraordinary amount of selfdiscipline to achieve just about anything that takes time, talent, or just plain perseverance. If you compare your life to a movie, Camerons method confronts only one half of the willpower problem: namely the script. Therefore, her book has apparently been able to help creative writers facing blockages. Acting Well confronts both parts of a movie: the script as well as the acting, by alternating techniques. Together, these techniques present a powerful tool to confront all problems requiring self-discipline, whether artistic and creative, or involving the four lifestyle changes (which are diet, exercise, smoking cessation, and stressreduction) that cardiologists recommend to heart attack patients. The applications to behavioral problems should be obvious, whether for recovering coronary patients, people suffering from prob158

lems of being overweight or having high blood pressure, or people who use alcohol, tobacco, pills, drugs, and so on, inappropriately. June 1999

Willpower
The words willpower are redundant, actually. When you exercise your will, you exercise your power. There is no more power in you than what your will can exercise. Will and power are the same thing. Your power doesnt come from within you. If it seems like it does, youre merely responding to an illusion. Actually, your power comes from the world outside that will either grant you your powers (providing you attempt to exercise them) or take them away. It seems like special cases when you talk about diet, exercise, and stress reduction, because those concepts depend on whether or not you do them. They dont seem to have anything to do with the world beyond. Nobody else can diet, exercise, or relax for you except you. How, then, can you say that the power to help yourself resides in the world beyond you, and not in you? The following example illustrates the answer: Its a common tale for drug addicts to recall the many times they had vowed never again to take drugs, then unexpectedly found themselves in a social situation where others were taking drugs, at which point they found themselves shooting upjust like that. They will always tell you that they didnt think about it, they didnt decide to do it, it happened automatically. Their will never entered the picture. In that sense, when you adhere to your chosen menu (in a supermarket or restaurant), or select foods based on your menu, you may think its your willpower thats doing it. In fact, your willpower is only your explanation for your action. The feeling of exercising your willpower always comes after the fact of your making a choice. Its not the cause of your choiceany more than the drug addicts willpower makes a choice. Thus, whatever willpower you appear to manifest while controlling your menu does not appear while eating, but while shopping in a supermarket. In that sense, all eating plans begin and end in the supermarketnothing important happens at the table! The main point is that all your powers, including your willpower, come from beyond you. Thats why Acting Well (during Morning Preparation, for example) concentrates so keenly on the sounds and lights that come from the outsidethat is, the sounds and lights that are not caused by you and that represent nature and the work of other human beings. Its from those invisible strangers that you derive all your powers. A King derives his powers, he says, from God; but in reality, he 159

derives them from the people who accept his sovereignty. It was this issue that the Declaration of Independence addressed when it said that all power derives from the people; therefore the people are sovereign, not a member of a royal family reputedly chosen by God. The fiction that used to prop up monarchies (that God established their rule) is like the fiction that your real self (or the god within you) is the source of your personal power. These ideas express the same basic concept: that power derives from within. It may seem that way, but its only a fiction. That concept is crucial when it comes to issues of empowerment, which arise when you feel powerless and want to change your situation. How do you do it? Another example illustrates the answer: When two people who have lived together many years have constantly given each other affection, you can say that it is their common practice to raise their personal self-esteem by feeling the love that comes from the other. They dont create good feelings about themselves by expressing love; their feelings of self-worth arise because they get love. In other words, a transaction takes place in such relationships: You give me love, I give love back to you, and we both feel better about ourselves. You cant arrange such transactions without at least two parties. In a sense, both parties fool the other and allow themselves to be fooled. (You can recognize this wily phenomenon more clearly in relationships between dogs and masters, as well as charitable philanthropists and charitable organizations.) It isnt that anyone is lying to anyone else or to himself or herself; its that a transaction is taking place, the true nature of which neither party needs to understand or generally wants to understand. Its just supposed to feel good. The good feelings come from beyond each of the individuals from the other (as is the case between dogs and masters). The good feelings arent created from within either individual. In fact, nothing would happen if the affection of a relationship depended on one individual expressing or receiving it while the other does nothing. Such relationships usually dissolve. To sum up this argument: Your willpower doesnt come from within you, although it seems to. Ultimately, all of your power (and all your knowledge and all your love!) come from outside your self, from the world in general, or from your friends, lovers, or parents now or years ago. If you dont feel like youre powerful, you wont be able to exercise your true powers. To get yourself to feel your true powers is one of the principle aims of Acting Well. That processof getting you to feel your powersinvolves transactions with the world (including how you look and walk and what clothes you wear) that lead to true empowerment. Dont misunderstand: To empower yourself doesnt require you 160

to fool yourself, merely to concentrate on the source of all power, which, although it may appear otherwise, resides exclusively in the world beyond your Self.

Take More!
If you love me, love my food. TAKE MORE! These sentences arent usually uttered, but theyre implied with every heaping serving bowl or plate served family style, that begs to be finished by anyone not yet groaning in pain from having eaten too much. The real implication behind TAKE MORE! is: If you dont take more, its because you dont love my food! (By extension, If you dont love my food, you dont love me!) In other words, if you overeat, you compliment the chef. Conversely, if you stick to normal portion sizes, you insult the chef. The only acceptable defense against such demented logic is, Im so stuffed, I couldnt eat another bite! Think about it! Overeating is the only acceptable excuse for refusing to overeat! Who made up these crazy rules? Cant we eat a normal size portion of an afternoon or evening meal without having to feign being victims of out-of-control appetites? How can anyone stay thin given these lunatic table manners? If theres a smoking gun behind the Fat Epidemic, the TAKE MORE! command, together with the exercise most days of the week idea, are lethal. If we could rid the nation of these two ideas, half of us could slim down fast! What makes you eat, ultimately, are the organic chemical highs you get from serotonin and dopamine. These two neurotransmitters, working together, tell you (1) that youve eaten enough and (2) that you got pleasure out of it. Without pleasure, you might never eat at all, unless forced. Without a sense of fulfillment, on the other hand, youd never stop eating. These two innate systems evolved together with exquisite precision. They worked just fine for Homo sapiens sapiensis until our species became too affluent and skilled in preparing fast meals. Then the trouble began. What makes people overeat, more than any other cause, is the fact that it takes most people longer for their reward neurotransmitter to kick in than it does for them to eat a normal meal. Therefore, if your whole meal is twice the normal size it should be (which it is in many restaurants, for example); and if its only fifteen minutes since you started eating, then youll tend to continue on for another five minutes at least, no matter how stuffed youve gotten. The reason is that the only reliable clue about when to stop isnt in your stomach (or brain, just yet), but on your plate. That is, until your fulfillment neurotransmitter kicks in that fi161

nally forces you to stop, you havent any other clue to go on, other than habit. The problem here is the timing of the fulfillment neurotransmitter. It simply takes too long to overrule the incredibly rude and juvenile behavior of an overzealous and insecure chef. Behavior modification psychologists sometimes recommend chewing food more slowly in order to counteract the delayed neurotransmitter effect. This concept will do nothing, of course, to protect people against the TAKE MORE! syndrome. In fact, its an idiotic strategy no sensible person would find acceptable for very long, or should even consider. However, theres an even more insidious factor behind the TAKE MORE! syndrome than the neurotransmitter effect. If someone else has prepared your food, you have to satisfy not only your own reward system, but also the reward system of the person who prepared the food! Thus, when you take seconds and thirds, you reward not only yourself but also the chef. Conversely, when you fail to take a second helping, youre punishing the chef not for preparing too much food (which is unthinkable to her, but nevertheless the true offense)but for having prepared food that wasnt tempting enough to get you to overeat. When youre up against two peoples reward systems (for example, your own and your mothers) that have been working according to this system almost since you were born, is it any wonder you gain weight too easily, and that you cant take it off without offending someone? The good news is that this problem will usually affect you only once per day, namely during the evening meal. Breakfast and lunch are usually no problem except for the morbidly obese. Many overweight people even skip breakfast in the peculiar belief that they somehow earn points toward a larger dinner if they trim back breakfast and lunch. Many overeaters consume exactly the same foods for breakfast and lunch every day for years. In fact, almost no one objects to a lack of variety 2/3 of the time. Its only the dinner hour at which most Americans insist they must have variety. The people who scream loudest about this subject arent the customers, but the preparers usually the wives and mothers who cook for their families. They cant conceive of cooking the same dinner day after day. How would they deal with all the complaints? The fact is that most of these cooks dont take the time, and dont practice cooking any dish sufficiently well and sufficiently often, to make something their families would want to eat day after day. These womens insistence on variety gives them an excellent excuse to be mediocre. On the other hand, if they started practicing preparing one or two specialties for six months, their level of competence would rise to that of a professional. Then they would make such a good dinner, of ideally apportioned sizes for each family member, and with such quick efficiency, that their families would be satisfied to forego variety in favor of (for example) Mamas Excellent Pasta 162

with Tomato Sauce. No seconds would offered (none would be available), and no one would get fat!

Crosshairs
One of the factors that led Darwin to recognize the theory of the origin of species was to discover, on a voyage to the Galapagos Islands, that slightly different species of finches inhabited different islands within the same geographical area. According to the theory of Special Creation, which he learned at Cambridge, he expected that his trip aboard the Beagle would confirm the theory that every species had been created (presumably by God) to conform to its particular climate. The theory of Special Creation is a sensible inference to draw from a belief in a God that was responsible for creating the Universe and everything in it. Nowadays, amongst the more enlightened classes, that theory seems absurd. Therefore, its easy to understand how painful it must have been for Darwin to defy his teachers in order to share his scientific discoveries with the world. One can think of the prevailing theory of the mind as being like the theory of Special Creation by imagining the human brain as a multi-dimensional geographical unit, and perceptions or memories as various species of birds that fly about within a particular climate. Thus, for example, various neuroscientists have mapped out hypercolumns of neurons in one of the visual areas of the brain where each hypercolumn represents a line tilted at a slightly different angle from its neighbors. Looking at these diagrams, one would suppose that all thoughts are referenced similarly, with each hypercolumn acting as a kind of special mailbox tilted slightly differently from the one adjacent to it. When a bird sees a line corresponding to the particular tilt of a particular mailbox, the bird flies into it (that is, the thinker perceives or remembers the line). One problem with this theory is that there has to be a perceiver to perceive the line. Just as the theory of Special Creation would only be useful if there is a Special Creator, so the prevailing theory of the mind can only assign a bird to a mailbox if there is someone to open the mailbox; and there isnt anyone. The solution to the problem is Darwinian. When neuroscientists observe the hypercolumns stacked in what appears to be a regular design, they assume that the design (the mailbox) came first, so that the assignment (that is, the bird, or the impressions that will match the mailboxs tilt) came later (like climate coming first so that finches could be custom-created later). The truth is more subtle in that the world (not the brain) selects where the mailbox ought to be. If new mailboxes are continuously being created (as they are in a Darwinian world, but are not according to the prevailing theory of the mind), and unusedor unusablemailboxes are continuously being 163

scrapped, theres more likely to be a proper mailbox to receive new mail when the world mails it in than not. Thus, whether a perception, recognition, or memory is created anew or referenced again, the manner in which it is located (as the manner in which a finch evolvesbut not necessarily the manner in which it flies about) is similar to the system in which a ray of light falls on a portion of the retina. One can think of that process as something that functions similarly to a pair of crosshairs (that is, an X-Y axis). In other words, the point at which the ray of light falls can be located on a two-dimensional retina by determining where an X-axis crosses a Y-axis. At that point (and only at that point), a specific perception or memory can be located. If, in a visual area of the brain, there is no hypercolumn (or, more accurately, no proper combination of columns) ready to catch the data, that particular point cannot be perceived or remembered. Thoughts and memories are more complicated than retinal images. In fact, even retinal image-points can be thought of as having axes or dimensions that correspond to the hypercolumns. Thus, it isnt the hypercolumn that remembers the tilt of the line. The I that perceives the tilt is nothing more than the hypercolumn itself, pulling referents together (in a manner similar to an envelope with a zip code on it locating an address) from different parts of the brain, all of which are found, one after the other, through a kind of multidimensional crosshair system, in a specific sequence that corresponds to the position of each hypercolumn. Thus, the entire system is mechanical (not mental or spiritual), and corresponds approximately to the Darwinian antibody immunity system. Only a mechanical system can be the basis of such a Darwinian crosshairs system. If such a system could regulate medical practice, it would affect how people live, eat, and exercise, for example. No longer would specific instructions be given that issue, by implication or example, from a benevolent God or His representatives on Earth. We are all responsible for our own bodies and brains, and all have exceptional powers to maintain and improve them. The penalties for ignoring our responsibilities lead to considerable sufferingwhich we can all avoid by locatingusing our evolved crosshairs systemthe truth of where we need to go, what we need to do, and how we need to change.

FAQ: Diet Menu Boredom

Won't I get bored eating the same thing every day while Im losing weight? _______________________________________________________ What They say:

Buy our diet books so you can test a different menu every day 164

of the year! Youll never get bored with our plan! Everythings regulated, all the calories and fat grams are counted, and all the portion sizes are guaranteed to let you lose weight for as long as you like. (We have incredible computer programs that permit us to mix and match your daily recipes to your specific needs!)

In other words, weve done all the work! All you have to do is purchase, prepare, serve, and eat!

Therefore, youll be so busy figuring out how to prepare all these different dishes, and finding the best places to buy all the new ingredients cheap, that you wont have time to get bored with what otherwise would be pretty dreary fare. _______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says: Diet food is inherently uninteresting because, when the calorie count has to be low enough to lose a pound or two a week, the choices of nutritious foods are too limited to be really tasty and interesting. (How much celery or soy can you eat?) Maybe one reason why diet specialists claim that losing a pound or more a week is both healthy and practical is that if they were to publish diet books with menus on which people would lose only four to five ounces per week, their recipes wouldnt be different from anybody elses cookbooks. How, then, could they market their books? In other words, a variety of recipes doesnt solve the inherent problem of eating diet food. It does, however, cause other problems, such as risking not getting enough nutrients every day, and motivating yourself to prepare new, complicated, and not very interesting recipes that only you, yourself, may wind up eating once or twice. Therefore, although variety is important, you can program it in on a daily basis if you increase the number of different kind of foods you eat, and make absolutely sure that you decrease (to normal) the size of each portion. _______________________________________________________ How Acting Well does it: Acting Well does nothing. You do it all. Over a period of several weeks, youll create your own regularized three-meal menu of foods that youll eat from now on. This menu will be only for you, not (necessarily) for anyone else in your family. You (or a servant or family member, if someone cooks for you) will be responsible for purchasing, preparing, and carefully measuring the weight (not the calories!) of all the food on your menu with absolutely no solid-food snacks available in the kitchen. Youll also be solely responsible for eating all of the food, allowing no leftovers to hang over from meal to meal (to remove all temptations to nibble between meals). After youve been on the menu for a while, youll know exactly where to get each of the ingredients and how to 165

prepare the food so that its always tasty, interesting, and exactly right. In other words, you can stop thinking about food except while youre actually eating it. You start your list of foods with the ones you love most. If there are foods you should eat (like fish) that you dont like, search for sauces or other condiments that will help make your eating experiences always pleasurable. They can make a huge difference in your life. You must include healthy portions of fruit and vegetables in your daily menu (the same ones every day) to make sure you have enough nutrients. You may have to experiment (and negotiate between food groups) until you find the right combination of foods that you want to eat on a daily basis. (When making these choices, youll discover that theres a big difference between a food you love occasionally, and one you can love eating every day. Making the choice isnt difficultbut itll probably surprise you.) Most Americans eat about ten different food portions per day, some of them double and triple size. You may consider eating twice as many portions as that, but all of them small or normal size. Eating a large proliferation of food is how you prevent boredom. How you finalize your list is by answering the following question: Last week, did you gain weight, lose weight, or stay the same? Depending on whether you want to gain, lose, or stay the same (some people need to put weight on, you know!), youll take some portions of food away from your menu, add new ones, or leave the menu as it is. If youre watching your weight, you may have to eliminate certain discretionary foods you may have begun with (for instance, chocolate cake every day). Quite soon, however, your period of experimentation (and negotiations between apples and chocolate cake, for example) will end, and youll be left with a healthy menu on which you can thrive. You may change your menus from time to time. However, none of the people who have stuck to an Acting Well menu for months or years have gotten tired of the system or bored with their menus. In fact, they love what they eat!

Memory and Consciousness

The manner in which the brain works is through mechanical means, not through supernatural methods that give rise to spiritual or immortal processes. Science has failed to recognize the actual process of how the brain works because of two factors: (1) For many years, it was thought that 166

there was no adult human neurogenesis, which made simple, mechanical explanations of how the brain worked based on the neurons seem impractical; and (2), as a result, the patterns of connective processes (that is, the system of pathways formed by axons and dendrites connecting the neurons) was assumed to be analogous to the unique patterns made by electromagnetic waves by which we recognize stars, voices, and music long distance via light and radio waves. The fallacy contained in the above analogy is that electromagnetic waves involve actual traveling particles (albeit without mass); whereas the waves that occur in the brain are more like the waves that occur when a stone is dropped into a pool of water. The water molecules that cause the waves to ripple dont move forward with the rippling waves; rather, they move around in circles, each molecule affecting the next. Only the crests of the ripples move outward in shapes that resemble widening circles. This rippling effect creates an illusion of forward movementunlike the ripples of an electromagnetic wave, which are composed of real particles that really move forward. (One sign of this illusion is that a watery rippling illusion occurs only in two dimensionssuch as on the surface of water, not within the watery mass itself; whereas electromagnetic waves spread in all three dimensions of a particular volume of gas, liquid, solid, or empty space.) Therefore, you cant draw an analogy between the way electromagnetic waves carry information through the Universe and the way information is propagated within the brain without raising unanswerable questions and creating unresolvable paradoxeswhich is what happened in neuroscience. On the other hand, if there are real particles in the brain (that is, the neurons repeatedly firing, which are analogous to molecules of water repeatedly circling within their own neighborhoods), then you can hypothesize a mechanical explanation of how the brain and its various functions, such as memory and consciousness, work. To refine the analogy between the rippling surface of a pond and what happens in the brain, imagine a particle of blue light impinging on a cone within the retina. A message (like a single ripple) travels from the retina to a receiving area in the back of the brain (namely, the occipital lobe). The first ripple travels on through the mid-brain to the outer cortex, where its matched against an appropriate index that contains abbreviated descriptions of phenomena that include blue light. From the index, the ripple travels back to the occipital lobe, where it continues to ripple back again to the index, but at a slightly diminished levelunless more blue light comes forth from the retina, in which case the ripple will be augmented. This mechanical process (of being diminished or augmented) is a checking process that can tell us whether the original blue light registering in the occipital lobe was a real event, analogous to a real stone being dropped in the pool, or a dream (for example, if the environment doesnt continue to cause the original light to be repeated at all). 167

In other words, the checking process continually asks: was it our imagination that made the water seem to ripple, or a real stone? Moreover, if it was a real stone, what kind of stone was it, and where did it drop? Knowing the location of the dropped stone will usually tell uswith a high probability of being correct, based on past experiencewhat the stone actually was: that is, was it a stone, a bird, a plane, or a dream? This checking process is what makes up consciousness, or the kind of awareness thats available to any mammal. A human beings awareness of consciousness, on the other hand, is an emotion, like any other, perceived exactly like any other emotion. Contemporary neurosciences prevailing theory of the mind has decreed that the checking process should be called working memory (or, earlier, short-term memory), and that the (checking) indexes that process information should be called long term memories. In fact, the checking process isnt memory at all. (Its more like a form of eidetic imagery.) Therefore, theres no such thing as working memory. Long-term memory is the system of indexes made up of neural column combinations. Its the only memory we have. If memory and consciousness can be explained by an analogy to a mechanical process, then controlling our own behavior can be absolutely regulated through mechanical means (usually simple repetition). On the other hand, if memory and consciousness have to be located (and controlled) in a structure analogous to a maze of water sluices, the complexity of such a system would be forever beyond comprehension. Behavior could then be subject to supernatural forces beyond our control, such as Divine intervention, prayer, morality, or willpower.

Envelopes of Knowledge
Neural column combinations constitute envelopes of knowledge. Theyre envelopes in the sense of bearing the addresses of the actual referents of which we can become conscious. Knowledge is the ability to sort into and call up the right referents in their proper sequences in order to cope with the world. Neural column combinations give us that ability. For at least one-half of a century, however, neuroscientists have assumed that the world created these envelopes of knowledge. Therefore, with the exception of explainable mistakes, a single envelope of knowledge would be likely to be truemeaning that if an envelope of knowledge exists, in almost every case it corresponds to a world reality. This assumption is close enough to the truth in cases where world events or situations can be checked against an envelope of knowl168

edge in a human brain. However, the assumption leads to false conclusions in certain ambiguous cases, such as a belief in God. More than 90% of Americans believe in God. Not even one of them, however, can produce a shred of credible evidence to support such a belief. How, then, could something in the world (or in Heaven) have created an envelope of knowledge that points to the images and associations that support a believers assertions every time the question comes up, Does God exist? The only answer can be, God must have created this particular envelope of knowledge. If the world creates all our envelopes of knowledge, then its easy to understand why neuroscientists have had such problems explaining the forces responsible for programming them. Obviously, if I observe a candle burning for the first time, the candle doesnt rearrange my brain circuitry to account for this new phenomenon. I do! But how does my brain do it? Therein lies the problem of consciousness, as well as all the other problems of the mind that scientists currently consider the most difficult. By throwing up their hands when it comes to trying to explain mental phenomena, scientists implicitly posit a mysterious force to account for consciousness and similar phenomena. (Sometimes they simply call it consciousness.) They as much as say, There is a God, and He makes the connections in the brain that make us aware. Of course, no self-respecting scientist would ever make such a statement! Nevertheless, the implication is clear: it might as well be God as any other unfathomable phenomenon. On the other hand, if I dont create my envelopes of knowledge, but they simply form on their own, waiting for experiences to confirm and hook them up, then it becomes much easier to explain how I make the connection between the world and my brain. (It isnt I who makes the connection, but a random system preprogrammed by evolution.) In other words, if I believe in God, its because my parents, teachers, spiritual advisors, and peers activated a preexisting, Godbelieving envelope of knowledge early in my youth and constantly reinforced it. Its no wonder, then, that I believe in God with all my heart! How could I not? The progression toward atheism, which happens to many college students in their undergraduate years, is therefore painful and uncertain; and it feels like a betrayal mixed with an intellectual triumph when it succeeds. Perception is actually evolution in action, because, when we perceive, the world (or the environment) selects useful envelopes of knowledge, and the brain eventually reabsorbs the useless ones. Under these circumstances, its easy to see how the world (exclusively!) selects our envelopes of knowledge. We have nothing to do with it! In other words, the world doesnt form or shape our envelopes of knowledge; it selects them. This process of selection is completely Darwinian. 169

The fact that neuroscientists today ignore (or deny) this Darwinian process has created a situation that would be analogous to communications scientists (or teachers) avoiding dealing with the conversations on a telephone system, concentrating instead on its wires, networks, storage areas, and telephone instrumentsonly because these material elements can be measured and diagrammed (and fixed!), while you cant do anything about the conversations. Conversations over telephone lines can be recorded, of course (and thereby proven real); but they cant be diagrammed because theyre made up of elements completely different from the telephone network system itself. However, the difference in materials doesnt make the conversations irrelevant! In fact, theres no point to having a telephone system if you cant converse over it! Therefore, if you really want to know how the brain works, observe the world as everyone agrees and understands it operates. This knowledge constitutes the conversations that go on in the telephone network system that constitutes the brain. In fact, every human brain is connected to every other human brain through this system of conversations with the world. Thus, were all part of a collective system of knowledgelike a collective brainwhich is the real world itself. Therefore, when Acting Well, concentrate on the world, not on your inner life. Stop trying to improve your inner self. Struggle to become part of the world.

Fad Diets
High-protein, low-carbohydrate diets have been sweeping the country for at least a century and a half. Following these regimens, you eat as much meat as you can, but eliminate all the sweet desserts you love and all the breads and pastas you usually cant resist. A typical testimonial of a man who says he lost 100 pounds might have him rave over a diet of eggs and bacon for breakfast, ribs and pork rinds for lunch, and a half a pound of cheeseburgers (without the buns) and more pork rinds for dinner. How long can you eat this way? What about all the cholesterol and fat that can produce irreversible cardiovascular damage, not to mention cancers associated with fatty diets? If all these diets are the way to go, why are half of all Americans still fat? Have fat Americans never gotten around to trying these diets? Have you? (I have!) Dr. Barry Sears created a concept called The Zone that sold an awful lot of books and made an awful lot of money. According to him, too much carbohydrate means too much insulin; and too much insulin takes you out of the Zone. Out of the Zone, you put on excess body fat and you cant get rid of it. 170

Sounds good. It simply happens to be utter rubbish. Proof that its just as easy to get too fat from eating too much protein as it is from eating too many carbohydrates (all that matters is the volume of food, not its chemical composition) came out in 1992 in a paper published by some doctors at The Rockefeller University (including Dr. Jules Hirsch, who takes a dim view of all these diets) who measured the precise number of calories consumed by test subjects who were on all kind of diets. What mattered, when it came to losing weight, were how many calories the subjects consumed. Whether those calories came from protein or carbohydrates didnt matter in the slightest. Nevertheless, Dr. Robert C. Atkins continues to claim that high protein diets work because they lessen your cravings for food. Blood sugar fluctuations...are aggravated by carbohydrate consumption, he says. It is these fluctuations that cause peoples constant obsession with food which is the biggest battle most people have with weight loss. Yet, in 1985, several doctors from the University of Vermont conducted a study in which one group of dieters started on a lowcarbohydrate diet and then switched to a low-protein diet, and another group did the reverse. The results were the same for both groups. The initial two weeks of dieting was associated with a decrease in appetite and elevation of psychological well-being, regardless of the composition of the diet.... Thereafter, appetite and mood approached basal levels. Further changes in these psychological reactions to dieting did not vary with the type of diet. In other words, the proof is irrefutable that the unproven theories about the psychological bad effects of refined sugars and carbohydrates that underlie the Atkins diet are bad science and outright lies. One doctor, cited above, who is tired of seeing the same useless diets emerge every few decades only to disappear until the next fad pops up is Dr. Hirsch of The Rockefeller University. Gina Kolata quoted him in The New York Times Health & Fitness section on January 18, 2000 (True Secret Of Fad Diets: Its Calories). He called these practices Alchemy. Its making gold out of ignorance, he said. That characterization shows how these fad diets are classic examples of how medical practitioners can usurp actual sections of our brains that have to do with our dietary choices. Theyve figured out how to make people believe their theories so that the rest of us will buy their books. The effect of this kind of brain usurpation is a large accumulation of anecdotal evidence (that is, testimonials), which they elicit from their patients and readers to back up their bad science. They create true believers out of people who pass along their truths by word of mouth. For example, months or years ago, you may have heard someone claiming to be a carbohydrate addict. Chances are that person triedthen went offa high-protein diet long ago. These true beliefs concerning restrictive diets are like computer 171

viruses. (Some scientists have actually named them memes.) Theyre designed by self-serving people to sell books. They replicate wildly. They fade out from time to time, but theyre sure to pop up again. Like the flu, they reappear in slightly different forms. They seem impossible to eradicate completely. The only sure remedy for malnourishment (which includes being overweight) is to take charge of those sections of your brain that govern behavioral choices (such as diet and exercise) that affect your weight. In other words, you dont get willpower from authors books (including this one!). You get it from your own behavioral choices: for example, making food and exercise habits instead of food selections and exercise appointmentsboth of which are fatal to any sensible health routine.

Im starting my diet on Monday!

Sure! And every Monday thereafter! Whats wrong with these people whore always going on diets? What losers! They say the same thing every week! Dont they have any moral fiber? No willpower? Why dont they just accept being fat and stop making promises they cant keep? If youre under 50 and still slender, you may feel that way; but entering middle age may tell you a different story. Its a sad one, too, for many people, of dashed intentions and miserable failures. Acting Well addresses these failures by synthesizing, for the first time, several paradigm shifting developments from such varied fields as anthropology, chemistry, medicine, and neuroscience. These developments belie many current beliefs about weight loss. For example, its often said that in order to lose weight you need to exercise. The inference most people draw from this assertion is that the more calories you burn during exercise, the more weight youll lose. The fact is theres no relationship between the number of calories you burn on a particular day and how much weight you lose over the long run. Burning calories is not what makes exercise the most potent form of weight control. In fact, if you exercise too much you may ruin the positive effects (such as increased testosterone) that exercise can have on weight control! Heres the new, real science behind the Monday Morning Diet Problem:

Evolution produced animal species (such as human beings) in which creatures are programmed to defend themselves when the need arises. If evolution had programmed the dominant creatures in a group (the winners) never to fight any battle to the death, the strength of the gene pool would de172

cline, and the species would perish. On the other hand, if every weaker creature (the losers) were programmed always to fight to the death, practically everyone would die too soon; and the same result would happen: the group would perish. Evolutions solution to this problem was to program animals through a system of hormonal balance. Thus, when a creature is winning, winner hormones are released in the creature which program the creature to persist in defending itself until it wins or loses. However, when a creature is losing, loser hormones are released, at which time the creature feels the need to escape so that, at a more propitious time, the creature can return, refreshed, fight anew, and possibly win. If someone on a diet (or exercise routine or any other programmed behavior) experiences a winners hormonal balance on a daily basis, that person will persist in the diet. (Doctors call this behavior compliance.) On the other hand, if someone on a diet experiences a losers hormonal balance regularly (even if on only certain days of the week), the opposite will happen: the person will escape from the diet in order to return at a more propitious time. That tendency is behind the statement: Im starting my diet on Monday! The declaration only makes sense if you understand that its the loser hormones talking, not the person.

If these theories are correct, then the obvious answer to weight control is regularly to shift the hormonal balance of a person trying to regulate a diet from loser to winner. Hormonal shifts may be possible through various drug injections (for example, shifting from a predominance of adrenaline in the body and cortisol in the brain compared to the amount of testosterone in the body and serotonin in the brain). Acting Well, however, is a natural way to shift hormonal balance. Furthermore, it turns out to be exquisitely specific, which drugs cannot be. The key to producing optimum levels of testosterone in the body is to exercise no more and no less than 30 minutes daily. If you practice too much in a day, you eventually lower the level of testosterone. (Thus, too much of a good thingsuch as a threehour session at the gym or a five-hour bicycle racecan be counterproductive. Some professional athletes, who endure many hours of 173

practice, require periodic injections of testosterone for this reason!) If you regularly skip days (for example, if you run most days of the weekmeaning you fail to exercise as many as three days a week), you wont keep your level of testosterone on an even keel from day to day. Thus, you wont get the benefit of a steady level of winners hormones. Although some days may be good, others will be bad. It will be on the bad days that you abandon good intentions, for evolution has programmed you to escape from the danger of failure. Therefore, remaining on a steady weight-loss or weightmaintenance regimen isnt about selecting the right foods; nor is it about how much or how little you exercise. Its about the steadiness of your daily choices. The one sure thing to keep in mind is that persistence and patience usually pay off.

Love
One of the worst afflictions of the me generation has resulted from authors who urge their readers to avoid co-dependencies that drain away the human potential from a self-centered relationship. How many divorces and break-ups have been excused by one partner claiming that She didnt grow at the same rate I did, or He and I were incompatible? The truth may have been that two people grew tired of each other sexually and at least one of them was eager to experience non-guilt adventures outside the relationship. Eastern spiritual practices sometimes seem to justify long-term relationship breakups when they encourage individuals to find salvation mainly in their feelings and observations about themselves to the exclusion of everything external to the Selfwhich is typically elevated to the level of a god within. This unhealthy enhancement of self-esteem is not the goal of Acting Well, which seeks, rather, to become more intensely aware of the feelings of othersand particularly to share the feelings of a long-term spouse or lover for those who have had the great good fortune to be able to have nurtured such a relationship. An old romantic movie called The Enchanted Cottage, with Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire (1945), illustrates the idea that physical attraction and delight in intimacy do not have to diminish over time between two lovers who grow old together. A soldier returns from the war horribly disfigured and inconsolable, to live out his days hiding from his neighbors in a cottage attended to solely by a homely domestic. Through a miracle that neither understands, the two fall in love with each other. Suddenly his scars and her plainness vanish. He becomes handsome and she beautiful. 174

A visitor blurts out the truth (that the lovers have never actually changed in the eyes of other people) and shatters the miracle. Suddenly the actors return to the original ugliness that they bore before the enchanted cottage created their folie deux. The movie is true to life in the sense that two people for whom love remains everlasting never detach the youth, beauty, and attractiveness from their beloved that time diminishes in the eyes of strangers. How it happens that this wondrous illusion comes about is a mystery. However, it happens often enough to belie the idea that men and women should use cosmetic subterfuges to keep their partners interested. Such losing battles are self-defeating efforts that produce artificial-looking creatures who look more monstrous than lovable at least in the eyes of strangers. All that is required for two people to maintain their physical attraction and comfortable intimacy as they grow older is for each of them to work continuously at realizing and expressing love. Any practice that regularly stimulates greater sensitivity to the outside world tends to make the practitioner a more loving person. Thus, the practices of Closure, Listening, Seeing, and the Oculus are all useful sensitization techniques that can lead directly to the experience of realizing how much you love the person you may have lived with for 15 years or more. More than that, the way you feel when you practice intimacy with your loved one is as good an exercise of Acting Well as any that anyone could invent. Its a perfect way to tend to your consciousness. If you practice Acting Well every day, your love will seem to grow with the years. This feeling may result from an illusion, but its a welcome illusion that shouldnt be questioned. That concept is the message behind The Enchanted Cottage. Eastern meditation practices that regularly encase their practitioners in self-examination as if in separate bell jars, cutting them off from other practitioners in an ashram, for example, or from the world at large; or preventing them from Listening by playing white noise or New Age music, do not encourage love. On the contrary, by concentrating on elevating self-esteem these meditative practices can cut lovers off from one another. If youre dirt poor, powerless, and inconsolable, how can you have a loving relationship? Theres nothing romantic about poverty! Thus, no effort was made when yoga was invented to encourage loving relationships, except in the abstract, with the god within, or with the cosmos in general. Such strategies make perfect sense for the downtrodden in a brutally stratified society; but they are harmful in a country of unbounded privilege. Part of the responsibility that Acting Well fosters is responsibility for ones partner in life. That responsibility, which is merely an extension of ones responsibility to the world at large, is as important as the responsibility one has to ones own self. If you love your partner fiercely, you will love yourself and the 175

world as well. You will experience the joy of living in the world, and be pleasured by the measureless bounty the Earth brings forth. You will have shared the ultimate experience you can have Acting Well.

Testosterone
Dear Dr. Masden: I just read an article in The New York Times Sunday Magazine by Andrew Sullivan about testosterone. Sullivan injects himself with testosterone periodically to raise his levels (he has HIV), and his report of the resulting effects sounded disconcertingly like the effects I feel from practicing the program I created for myself (which Richard now also followsincreasingly). Sullivan describes the following effects:

His lost appetite resumed. He went from napping two hours a day to now rarely sleeping in the daytime, and has enough energy for daily workouts and a hefty work schedule. Depression was a regular feature of his life and is now a distant memory. He feels better able to recover from lifes curveballs, more persistent, more alive. Within hours of injection, he feels a deep surge of energy, less edgy than a double espresso but just as powerful. His wit is quicker, his mind faster, and his judgment is more impulsive. In other words, he feels braced. He reports that in other men testosterone often correlates with energy, self-confidence, competitiveness, tenacity, strength, and sexual drive. One man told him It makes me think more clearly. It makes me think more positively. Its my Saint Johns Wort. Another man told him: Usually I cycle up the hill to my apartment in 12th gear. In the days after my shot I ride it easily in 16th.

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Another executive said I walk into a business meeting now and I just exude self-confidence. Im on a roll. I feel capable of almost anything. Another man said, It turned my life around. I felt stronger and not just in a physical sense. It was a deep sense of being strong, almost spiritually strong. Sullivan claims it combats depression differently from antidepressants: it alleviates gloominess primarily by propelling people into greater activity and restlessness, giving them less time to think and reflect.

All these descriptions sound very familiar to me! They cover the difference in my life that Acting Well, which I undergo daily, has brought to me. As I think Richard mentioned, I used to appear to him to be depressed all the time; and for the past few years, hes seen none of that. Ive noticed these changes of course, but I associated them primarily with exercise. For example, people claim that jogging releases endorphins. Thats what I thought I was feeling. However, after reading Sullivans article, Im beginning to think that it may not be endorphins that joggers feel, but testosterone. I think that hormone may be the magic ingredient that sets me up to practice good health habits. Without it I might easily revert to bad habits, bad food, stressed out living, and so forth. I still need the morning psychic workout to motivate the exercise. However, I think theres also a reciprocal effect from the exercise that motivates the next days morning psychic workout as well as healthful dietary habits. I bring all this up because I think it would be interesting, someday, to measure the T levels in my saliva before and after I ride my bike each day. One could probably determine if theres anything to this theory or notat least in me. A lot of what Sullivan and I wrote above could be accounted for by the placebo effect. Some of it seems awfully anecdotal. For example, if testosterone has increased my sexual drive, which it theoretically should, its news to me! Just thought I would share. P.S.: I almost forgot the most interesting part of Sullivans report on testosterone: Concerning competitive sports: The winner of any single game sees his T production rise; the loser sees it fall. The ultimate winner 177

experiences a post-game testosterone surge, while the loser sees a collapse. This is true even for people watching sports matches. Sullivan presents an evolutionary argument to explain these phenomena, which I wont go into here. However, concerning healthdriven exercise, in my opinion, Ive always felt that competition was inimical to the practice. When I exercise I do it alone and I never race other bikers (except sometimes, rudely, with strangers, when Im sure I can win!). The reason I now believe is that I feel intuitively that if you race, you risk losing, in which case you dont keep the testosterone levels up to where they need to be to ensure your compliance to health measures that require constant motivation. In other words, I equate willpower to T-levels. When the Tlevels are down, theres very little you can do about activating your willpower. When theyre up, theres very little you can do to stop yourself from doing what youve intended. Thus, willpower isnt a moral or a good character thing. Its probably all chemical. Therefore, people can do something about it! Regards, Marshall April 2000

Morning Pages
Julia Cameron in The Artists Way instructs creative writers facing writers block to practice a form of automatic writing every morning. She calls it Morning Pages. Morning Preparation, on the other hand, is more like the breathing process, ormore graphicallylike digging a hole with a shovel. Theres an in and an out. Morning Pages are all out. Theres no toggling back and forth; theres only a sticking the shovel in. The problem is, you need to do something about the dirt youve just shoveled before you can make a hole deeper. For example, before writing anything in the Acting Well log, you need to stimulate your memory and senses. Then, if you do it right, youre bound to get an idea about something you feel you must write downbecause its too good to forget! That writing down of the idea (including your fingers writing it, drawing a line below the entry, and writing the number for the next idea) is like creating a layer of thought (or shoveling another layer of dirt on a pile). You may suddenly get an urge to dig (which results from Morning Preparation). That process leads to swinging down the shovel, as it were. Then you put your foot on the shovel, bring up the dirt, and fling it to the sidewhich is what happens during Steps & Landings. 178

One metaphor for this idea is that all youve created is a holeits ethereal. Theres not really anything there; just electrons spinning through your brain. The dirt is the pen or pencil marks you make in the log. It makes the ethereal permanent. Although its only symbolic, its nevertheless ready to communicate to another brain. Camerons Morning Pages are supposed to be, as she puts it, apparently pointless and strictly stream of consciousness. In the case of Morning Preparation, Acting Well instructs you not to write anything until you absolutely must write something down (and that something can only be a short note to remind you later of an idea you may extend in a longer essay). Then you draw a line and wait for the next moment of inspiration. You repeat this process until you fill the log page, writing down only those thoughts that are too great to forget. By the end of the page, youll always feel quite comfortable and ready to write an essay (or longer piece) that will have a theme, a point, a structure, a beginning, middle, end, and so forth. (You should write an essay at the conclusion of Morning Preparation at least for the first six months. After that, youre on your own.) By the time youre ready to begin writing the essay, itll be like writing a letter to an intelligent friend. It wont be art, but itll be interesting! In other words, you should avoid using Morning Preparation to keep a diary of what happened to you yesterday. Rather, you should always dig a hole thats deeper than your shallow memories. Otherwise, all youll do is to shift around some piles of dirt. There may be some value to keeping a diary; but theres no score at the end of it. You may feel youve accomplished something; but theres nothing of value to show for your efforts: no trophies and no applause. During Morning Preparation, on the other hand, you never know, when you start, where youll end up. However, at the end, youll feel that youve written something worth saving. Youve paid attention to specific sensual moments in the past. Youve concentrated on the present moment thinking about what youre doing, not what you did. You dig a hole into the moment, not an aimless tunnel to the past. When you dig a hole, although you dont know what youll find, the one thing you do know is that the direction is always deeper. The best way to get deeper is to bring yourself forward entirely into the now, experiencing the sensations of the present, and using the past only to re-experience sensual memories that will create the right mood in you because they squeeze out the right neurotransmitters. Thus, in Morning Preparation, you have to do two things: (1) you must conjure sensuality through memory (or directly from the world) and then (2) you must give what you sense new form through a symbolic act (such as writing, drawing, composing music, noting a mathematical formula, etc.). 179

This back-and-forth process (conjuring and giving form) is like laying down the layers of a battery with insulators in between each layer. The layering process creates a batterys potential energy. Its the same with Morning Preparation. With Morning Pages, meditation, or yoga, on the other hand, its all a single process that stores no latent, potential energy.

Addressing Childhood Obesity

The principles underlying Acting Well are necessary guidelines to apply to behavioral modification in obese children. Its helpful at first to clarify a number of misapprehensions and false assumptions that cause obesity in general. For example, just as diets dont work for adults, they dont work for children, and for the same reasons. The main necessary component diets always leave out is discipline. Similarly, for children, the hoary old idea that exercise can act as a kind of neutralizer to calories (that is, the more one eats, the more exercise one needs to doas if calories were a kind of poison, and exercise its antidote) needs to be destroyed. The reason why exercise is necessary for weight control has nothing to do with calories, for the number of calories the body metabolizes during exercise is indeterminable. There are too many variables involved (for example: age, sex, metabolism, general fitness, how used to exercising one is, and whether one measures the number of calories burned at the start of a session or at the end of it). One would particularly need to take into account all the physical (fat-burning) activities other than exercise that one does on a particular day to determine how much exercise can influence weight control on that particular day, but not necessarily on any other. Its well known that the probability of a child becoming obese is far higher in families where one or both parents are obese. Although this fact may seem to suggest a genetic factor governing obesity in children, the increase in the proportion of obese children in the general population over the past decades argues against genetics as a significant factor in the vast majority of cases. (The National Foundation for the Centers for Disease and Prevention reported in the year 2000 that 22 percent of girls and 20 percent of boys ages 6 to 17 were obese, up from 15 percent of both sexes in the 1970s.) Theres no reason to suspect that the influences that are causing a majority of Americans to be overweight are different for children. The fact that no one has yet found a cure for this deplorable situation doesnt mean that a cure isnt at hand; or that a cure, if found, would be different for children than for adults. In a society where new technologies have given people ever newer ways to avoid exerting themselves, children are especially prone to taking advantage of various labor saving devices that re180

quire less effort for themselves and their parents (for example, getting car or bus rides to school and back). Safety precautions that protect children tend to shelter them from playing in unsupervised parks, taking walks in natural surroundings by themselves (or with their busy parents), or even exploring city neighborhoods on foot. Thus, telling children to get more exercise is no answer. What are they supposed to do? Planning occasional physical activities for them (such as taking them to a dance class on Tuesdays) does no good. What are they supposed to do the other six days of the week? Unless physical activity is increased for a sustained period every single day, the good it may do to keep a childs weight down is utterly inconsequential. Schools do a poor job in this regard as well (although the right self-supervised, non-competitive program, practiced only a half-hour a day, would go a long way in solving the problem of childhood obesity!). Few schools offer daily exercise regimens. Gym teachers try to interest students in physical education through occasional competitive sports, which is quite the wrong way to go if one wants to create lifelong fitness habits in the majority of students. So what should children do? The answer is: the same thing adults should do, namely, to practice a daily form of fitness exercise that is consistent, non-competitive, and that encourages the perfecting of a skill. Only with a regular form of exercise can children form automatic, habitual behavior. Its the only way to build a discipline. Occasional activities, even ones a child loves to do, can do more harm than good. A variety of seven activities spread out over a week also doesnt address the problem because no human being can build a skill in any physical activity by practicing only one day a week for half an hour. Acting Well is an ideal discipline for children to learn because they dont bring the baggage to the table that adults tend to do. They love being told exactly whats expected of them; and so they often follow directions better than adults do who have strong opinions, especially about subjects like weight control.

The American Heart Association

Dear Dr. Masden: Ive done some research on the Internet and found a rather shocking list of tips from the American Heart Association for complying with an exercise program. This list has obviously been compiled by people who dont exercise regularly. Ive heard these foolish bits of advice for years from various sources but never found so many of them gathered in one place before. I feel rather passionately about how people should exercise for 181

health compliance purposes, and I think one of the services your foundation might provide is to let people know what exercising will be like after theyve been doing it for quite a while. The rules for the AHAs Exercise Success that are listed below (with my impertinent comments added) are intended for someone who hasnt started exercising yet. I think reading these tips would encourage anyone not to begin exercising! Choose activities that are fun....

For steady compliance, you should be looking forward to performing only one exercise, not having to choose each time between several activities. ...Add variety....

Choose only one activity and stick to it. Youll never get seriously better at it otherwise working out only a half-hour a day. ...That way, exercise will never seem boring or routine. Variety is not the way to avoid a boring routine! Proficiency is. If you miss an exercise opportunity, work activity into your day another way.

As if some other activity were an exact equivalent to exercise. Not if youre serious. A pointless suggestion. Use music to keep you entertained.

When you try to add musical pleasure to physical activity, it deprives you of the potential pleasure of both the music and the exercise. Although I realize that CD players do raise compliance levels for people who use exercise bicycles, I personally think that getting better and better at what you do is the best form of entertainment. Surround yourself with supportive people.

You should remain private while you exercise, although other people may be all around you. Socializing while doing a daily exercise can diminish its effectiveness to the point where you might as well not do it on that particular day. I see this phenomenon all the time in Central Park between male and female bicycle riding partners who meander down the park roads, talking, and never even working up a sweat. Not only are they often rude and dangerous (caught up with each other, they become impervious to other riders), they sacrifice their opportunities to exercise that day in order to date. 182

Find a companion to exercise with you if it will help you stay on a regular schedule and add to your enjoyment.

A terrible idea! (1) No companion can or should be depended on to show up every single day for the next ten years. (2) If a companion cant make it (which will inevitably happenoften!) it will provide too easy an excuse to miss exercising yourself. Your compliance will be shot to hell. (3) Daily exercise is a private affair; social interactions diminish its effectiveness. (4) Companions are best used for competitive sports like tennis, which are unsuitable for daily exercise mainly because partners arent reliably available, and their respective skills will rarely match yours over the years. (I dont mean that people shouldnt play tennis! However, everyone needs to be clear about which sports are for recreationsuch as tennis, which are for vanitysuch as weight lifting, and which are for fitness. Recreation is for weekends and with families. Vanity is for the vainwhenever. Fitness must be pursued every day. Exercise three or four times per week for 30-60 minutes.

No! You cant create a habit most days of the week. (Try teaching children to brush their teeth most days of the week!) In addition, for maximum testosterone benefit, you should not exercise more than 30 minutes daily. Furthermore, 60 minutes exercise (plus showering, dressing, etc.) is usually not possible for a working person during the week. Reward yourself at special milestones. Nothing motivates like success.

This pitiful salute to behavioral therapy wont signify at all after youve been exercising for five yearsor even one. ...walking is a great activity for you.... A horrible lie!unless youre over 90 or grotesquely obese. Take more time to warm up and cool down while exercising.

You dont have to waste any time at all when youre working out for only 30 minutes a day. Nature warms and cools you off sufficientlywhich is another reason not to spend too long on fitness exercises. April 2000

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Behavior Modification
The main difference between Acting Well and behavior modification programs (to help people lose weight, for example) is that behavioral modification aims for permanent behavioral change. Acting Well, on the other hand, although it may produce permanent change, aims only for temporary changeevery day from now on. If youre used to eating snacks throughout the day from candy dishes in the living room, cookie jars in the dining room, cake platters in the kitchen, etc., then a behavioral modification program will advise you to remove these temptations and get used to eating at specific times during the day, in one specific place, chewing each mouthful 20 times, putting your fork down between bites, and so forth. These behavioral techniques are supposed to help you go from one set of (bad) habits to a different set of (good) habits. The implication is that once youve abandoned your bad habits its smooth sailing from then on. Youll never be tempted to return to your bad ways of eating again. The method behind Acting Well is more like how an actor portrays Hamlet. The actor would never look on his normal life as a series of bad habits and try to modify his behavior to take on Hamlets good habits. Nor would he seek to change anything permanently. He changes his behavior (that is, his actions) only temporarily. When the shows over the actor goes back to his normal life. In the same way, when you practice Acting Well you only alter your actions (you create your character) beginning with Morning Preparation and developing further on your World Walk. In other words, you only need to perform twice a day for a few minutes at a time, sometimes before an audience of strangers, just as an actor only needs to rehearse or perform for two hours eight or nine times a week. Hes never expected to permanently change his character. However, an actor may depend on certain behavior modification techniques to portray Hamlet honestly. For example, he may wear a certain costume made out of a fabric that provokes certain sensations and emotions in him. He may surround himself with personal items that recall incidents that help set the scene for him. The set and lighting design may trigger appropriate feelings in him, and so forth. In the same way, you may select various items to set the Acting Well scene for you. However, the actor will never become Hamletunless he has a serious nervous breakdown! Nor will you ever become a different person permanently. Every morning and afternoon your play will begin again (and it should be play, not work!). Youll need to set yourself in a specific place, take more care in choosing your costume, and so on. Your life may change, but your goal shouldnt be to change yourself permanentlyalthough you may find yourself developing cer184

tain habits that change your life for the better. However, if that happens it will happen on the edge of your consciousness, not at the center. You cant aim for results. You have to trick yourself into them, just as an actor produces real emotions through tricks and techniques. If you think of Acting Well as a behavior modification program where bad habits turn into good ones, then it wont work for you. There will never come a time when it will all come naturally to you (that is, when you can just coast on your achievements). Acting Well doesnt work that way. You must play the game every day, returning to the same techniques, and improve them constantly. The task is as challenging and satisfying as it is for an actor who returns each time to the job of portraying Hamlet; and for similar reasons. Living fully in the moment (that is, becoming as conscious as you can be), which can happen during Acting Well in the morning, or on the World Walk, doesnt happen because youve developed a new good habit. On the contrary, the idea that you can always be in a state of perfection is contrary not only to Acting Well, but to logic and human nature. Such expectations demand too much of you which is the main reason why behavior modification programs that promise permanent change rarely last. Your arousal to consciousness may happen only rarely. Make the most of it when it does!

Why I Cant Change

In order to practice Acting Well, you must change. Change doesnt mean gritting your teeth, taking whatever is in your brain, and making it different (according to the prevailing theory of the mind). On the contrary, parts of your old self must disconnect and dissolve, while new, currently unimaginable parts, which have never existed, must be created. Until these new parts come into existence (or, if they already exist, until you activate them), you cant change. Power relationships in the world have evolved over millennia so that political forces, in order to maintain power, resist change. People who want to change and cant are victims of these political forces which create, support, or follow religions that believe in immutable and immortal powers (such as gods). These immutable forces set cultural examples that must be followed, often on pain of excommunicationor worse. God always was and always will be, these politicians proclaim. Divine forces cant be changed. Natural Law has always known whats right and wrong. Even death cant change the soul. Thus was born the doctrine of predestination; and thus was born the belief that, deep down, everyone is goodor, alternatively, deep down, everyones a sinner, damned to Hell, unless saved. The inference drawn by any patient that believes in these immu185

table powers, and whose doctor prescribes a lifestyle change, is: I can never change! For 50 years, neuroscientists have followed this (socio-political) party line in believing that the basis of human knowledge and behavior is genetically inbornor at least permanently established in infancy. It can neither grow nor change. It can only improvise and die with the body. Since legitimate scientists universally favor the idea of evolution, however, neuroscientists have lately tended to support the idea that the brain must work according to Darwinian principles. On the other hand, most neuroscientists, still regarding the principle of neurogenesis irrelevant, cling to the idea that old or new neurons are tabulae rasae upon which new connections inscribe novel thoughts and memories. What these neuroscientists fail to realize is that in order to have a Darwinian selection process in the brain, the selection must choose between existing set possibilities. A neuron, therefore, cannot be a tabula rasa. It must, somehow, be set, just as you must unfold and set up a real card table before you can sit down and play cardsor eat. Its not true that the environment sets our tables. The neuron itself (actually a column of neurons) is born with its own unique place setting that is suitable for only certain kinds of menus. Various foods may match these menus; but the choices (which are Darwinian) must match a certain degree of precision that will ultimately select a few possibilities in order to discard many. In other words, if the brain were a tabula rasa on which the environment inscribes new memories as novel events occur, how could Darwinian selection take place? A Darwinian process is only possible in cases where many memories wait for an environmental event to select (or activate) one possibility. The result is that many other possibilities fade and disappear. Thus, for a patient who is told: From now on, you must eat oatmeal (or an equivalent food) for breakfast every morning for the rest of your life, there is bound to be a negative reaction. I dont see my future that way, the patient may say. I cant even imagine it! What must happen is that new brain cells set for oatmeal can only be activated by environmental events (such as ones own preparation and eating of oatmeal) before a life-long habit can begin to establish itself. Reading a book (even this one!) isnt enough. Motivation isnt enough. Attending lectures isnt enough. Following a doctors orders isnt enough. Arguing with a friend, no matter how persuasive the friend, isnt enough. Contemplation isnt enough. Prayer isnt enough. Starting a new diet on Monday isnt enough. Simple action is enough. Once you take action a few times, it will amaze you how you suddenly feel, with complete certainty, I could have been doing this all along! I love it! Its me! 186

Youve sat down at the right table that someone (or something) else has set for you. The servants have arrived and spooned out the food. The smell delights you. The taste satisfies. Youve changed.

German Spanish
Lets say you have weak lungs, and your doctor orders you to move permanently to a warm, dry climate. You settle on Mexico. You can afford to move and live there, and the climate is agreeable. The problem is, you dont speak Spanish. Therefore, you seek out the best and most convenient language teacher with whom you can study intensively for the next six weeks. At the end of the period, youll be able to speak fluent German. ...Wait! Why study German if youre going to live in Mexico? The reason, you point out (with perfect logic), is that the Spanish teacher requires a year of study to learn the language properly; whereas the German teacher makes you work longer, harder hours so that you can make a years progress in one-eighth of the time. You want to get your foreign language out of the way before you move down there, so you can settle in right away instead of delaying your enjoyment of Mexico a whole year while you learn the language. It makes perfect sense, right? Obviously, if you follow this crazy logic, youd be better off staying home! The parable illustrates what happens when otherwise intelligent people decide that theyre willing to lose weight if (and only if) they can lose it quickly. They figure that if they have to struggle with adhering to a diet, they might as well get it out of the way as fast as possible. The truth is, these people are practicing German to live permanently in Mexico. It wont work! Their plan, however logical it is, is doomed to fail because its inappropriate. If you want to move to Mexico, it behooves you to take as long as you need in order to learn the language. The best way to learn it is to move there and pick it up naturally. Furthermore, there are many more things to learn about Mexico in order to live more comfortably than the language! Likewise, when an overweight person decides to become a slim person, its like moving to a foreign country (lets call it the Republic of Thin). The people in Thin tend to think a certain way, speak a certain way, eat certain indigenous foods at certain times of the day, and so on. Its not just their language thats different, its everything. Therefore, if you want to move to Thin, you have to develop an entirely new set of habits. 187

The people in Thin dont starve themselves regularly to lose weight. They dont have to, because theyre already thin! They maintain their thinness by eating regularly in a more controlled manner. Thus, they never get fat. In order to live comfortably among the people of Thin, you need to learn their customs. As Mexicans dont normally speak German, the people of Thin dont normally stay on starvation diets. Unfortunately, when most people try to lose weight, they pick a starvation diet (which is any diet that permits no more than 1,500 calories per day) from hundreds of diets that are available. Most people consider a diet meaningful only if someone can lose at least a pound or two a week by following it. Many people enjoy going on these starvation dietsfor a while. These people like challenges. When learning a new language, they enjoy the extra thrill of being able to travel in a foreign country and read shop signs and converse more easily. Similarly, many people on starvation diets enjoy the camaraderie of support groups. They enjoy the moral victory of shedding 20 or 30 pounds. However, like the American tourist who feels a special patriotic glee when coming home to American soil, there comes a time at the end of every diet when the challenge is over, the pounds are lost, and the reward time brings the erstwhile dieter back to the cakes, the pies, the second helpings, and the two martinis before dinner. I proved I can do it, means, I can do it again and again, as needed. Welcome to yo-yo diet-land! If you want to lose weight permanently, dont learn German to go to Mexico! Dont go on a starvation diet that will inevitably lead to your gaining back the weight you lost! Develop a new way of life that will make you more conscious and healthier, not just thinner.

Imagination
Modern acting technique is mostly based on techniques developed by Konstantin Stanislavski about a century ago in Russia. These techniques were brought to the United States and used in the 1930s by the Group Theatre. Lee Strasberg was probably the most prominent proponent of some of these techniques (which he called the Method). Stella Adler, however, was the only member of the Group Theatre actually to study with Stanislavski. When she brought back her knowledge of Stanislavskis System, it was slightly different from Strasbergs. When she protested that her technique conformed more closely to Stanislavskis than Strasbergs, Strasberg argued that Stanislavski is wrong! Thus, a rift developed between the two acting teachers. Adler eventually left the Group Theatre to run her own acting school until her death in 1992. The Group Theatre ended operations in 1941, and Lee Strasberg went on to form the Actors Studio (and 188

later the Lee Strasberg Institute) where he continued to promulgate his acting method. Stella Adler claimed that the main difference between the Strasberg method and the Adler technique had to do with the role of the imagination. Strasberg taught actors to use sense memories and other technical means to recall actual incidents and the specific details surrounding them in order to reawaken emotions that would make an actors character more credible. Adler insisted that techniques based on emotional recall were too confining, not always reliable, and less rich as sources of inspiration than what she called imagination. People often referred to Strasberg as a guru; for his relationships with his students tended to be strongly hierarchical and directorial. Adler, on the other hand, says in her book, The Art of Acting, Write this down: My aim is to be independent from Miss Adler or anybody else.... I will help you to achieve this independence. Strasbergs technique, of course, was based on the prevailing theory of the mind, in which thoughts and memories are supposedly formed out of new connections between neuronal groups. These connections (according to the theory) are created fresh and become permanent because of actual, real events in the outside world (except for aberrant cases of hallucinations, etc.). The teacher (or parent or guru) who got there first must, therefore, be obeyed. An actors imagination is too wild and unreliable to guide anyones performance. Adlers technique was more tolerant of an actors imagination. Her point of view, therefore, was more in line (although she didnt know it) with the hypothesis that all memories (especially emotional memories) are combinations of pre-formed referents, and may therefore be activated not only by events in the real world and aberrations in the brain, but through what she called imagination. If a dream can activate a combination of preexisting columns (that is, a memory), which, because it reverberates for some time, seems to have as much reality to it as the real thing, then imagination can probably do the sameat least according to Adler. The debate between proponents of the Actors Studio and the Stella Adler Studio of Acting continues. (On occasions, it becomes heated!) One problem the Adler proponents have is that the word imagination is always so poorly defined. If you understand the word in terms of the neural hypothesis above, it becomes clear that theres no real difference between imagination and perception. That idea, of course, is the point of the hypothesis and its relationship to Acting Well. In a sense, we can make our own reality without listening to wellmeaning experts (like Lee Strasberg) to become exceptional actors in life. In that sense, teachers like Stella Adler are more to be trusted because they want to liberate us (as does Acting Well) from false assumptions and information. These methods can therefore teach us to trust our intuitionmeaning to become more aware of our own 189

impressions, which is one of the goals of Morning Preparation, for example. Full disclosure: although I never met Stella Adler, Im currently a consultant to her acting studio and good friends of her surviving family. However, I was a member of the Actors Studio Playwrights Unit for two years, occasionally driving Lee Strasberg home. Although I knew him only slightly, I respected his directorial and analytic brilliance above anyone elses. Nevertheless, I think he was dead wrong on the issues with which he differed with Stella Adler.

FAQ: How much weight can I lose on your system?

What They say:

Choose any objective you like! Lose five, ten, fifteen, even a hundred pounds almost instantly and without stapling, liposuction, organ removal, or amputation! Our scientific system has you figure out how many pounds you want to lose, then divides that number by ten, and thats how many weeks it will take youif you lose ten pounds a week! In other words, we promise you the Moon. But if you cant get to the Moon on your own steam, thats your fault.

Therefore, since every case is different, you may just be that one in a trillion lucky people for whom our system works. (Not that it ever has.) _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: One of the things method acting teachers tell their students is: Dont go for results! If an actor goes for results, the audience won't believe the performance (precisely because no believable character would ever go for results). Therefore, if you learn technique (that is, some tricks of the trade), the results will take care of themselves. Thats the magic of the Stanislavski system. In other words, creating a goal for yourself (for example, to lose 20 pounds by December) is a bad, bad idea! For example, for most adults, becoming overweight is only one of the most obvious symptoms of the general deterioration of the body as people disengage from their youth to enter middle age. Other effects of age-related deterioration include more serious ailments, such as heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and the kind of cancers that show up when people get older. Thus, there are far more important issues at stake for those who practice Acting Well than vanity or pride in appearance. A person who stays in tip-top condition can avoid most, if not all, 190

age-related systemic ailments for a long time. Therefore, the overall objective of Acting Well is to address every major area of health that can help you be in top condition. The program wont work unless all these areas are addressed. (An actor, after all, has to be concerned about more than lines: there are proper costumes, makeup, sound, lighting, and stage directions that go into perfecting a performance. You need to think about these things, too.) Thus, the program should not be used merely to lose a specific number of pounds. Thats like an actors objective playing a particular role being to get good reviews. Critical notices or applause have nothing to do with a fictional characters life! Nor does losing weight according to a particular schedule have anything to do with creating yourself as a thin person. It can take a long time to learn to be thin. If you try to speed things up, all you may do is create a fat person who suddenly gets thin by means of a temporary starvation diet. You wont have trained that thin person to feel comfortable staying thin by continuing to stay on a thin persons diet. Therefore, when reaching a goal weight, the first thing such a person may do is revert as soon as possible to his or her original dietwhich rewards hunger instead of eliminating it, which is one reason why people get fat in the first place. Therefore, dont choose a certain number of pounds to lose by the end of a particular period. It wont help you, it will only hinder; when you reach your goal youll simply reward your hard-won success by getting fat again. The proper answer to the question about how much weight you can lose while Acting Well is that Acting Well will help you reach the ideal weight for your body type if you improve your life in all major health areas, especially in the area of fitness. There are no limitations as long as you dont go for results. The best schedule for weight loss, however (and the answer to the question), is that you can expect to lose about two pounds per month without making extraordinary efforts. Dont try for more heroic measures. Theyll defeat you in the end.

Contradictory Science
Science offers considerable health advice that sometimes isnt good, isnt true, changes quickly, is contradictory, or is out of date. Consequently, many people dont know what to do or what to believe. For example, within a single article by Jane Brody in the New York Times about macular degeneration, the reader fearful of the disease is advised to avoid cholesterol (a suspected cause) by cutting out meat and fatty foods. A few paragraphs later the same reader is advised that zinc may protect against the disease; and that food sources of zinc include meat, liver, [and] eggsin other words, foods infamous for containing the highest concentrations of cholesterol! 191

Ms. Brody doesnt mention the ludicrous inconsistency. Such contradictions are typical of many studiesalthough rarely so blatant within a single article. Heres another example from Ms. Brody (who, for my money, is one of the best medical science writers in the business, by the way): The very wide leather belts worn to protect the backs of men who lift heavy objects apparently give more support to the image and ego than to vulnerable body parts.... Dr. William Marraas and his colleagues at Ohio State University...said... If back belts offer any help at all under realistic circumstances, its a very small effect. Yet shortly thereafter, Dr. Simeon Margolis, in a Johns Hopkins White Paper, reported: Contrary to previous research, back belts may in fact help prevent low back pain. Which report do you believe? Marcia Angell, M.D., the executive editor of The New England Journal of Medicine (which is arguably the most authoritative medical research publication in America), is an intelligent writer who demonstrated (in the New York Times Magazine) how easily and confusingly medical statistics can be manipulated. Take the study that found post-menopausal estrogen is associated with a 30 percent increase in the risk of breast cancer.... Since only 3 or 4 percent of post-menopausal women will get breast cancer in the next 10 years..., put in another way...this study shows that your chances of remaining free of breast cancer for 10 years would decrease from over 96 percent to about 95 percent. These ways of expressing the same finding have very different psychological effects, even though they are saying the same thing. On the other hand, breast surgeon Dr. Susan Love (in an Op-Ed piece in the Times) warns women against post-menopausal hormone therapy altogether. She believes that the only virtue in treating menopause as a disease is to make money for doctors and pharmaceutical companies. True, she writes: The women on hormones have 50 percent less heart diseasebut they are also better educated, richer, and more likely to see a doctor and take care of their health than the women not on hormones. Until a study takes these factors into account, we wont know whether hormones make women healthy, or whether healthy women take hormones. One of the most frightening and ludicrous scientific studies to be reported by Ms. Brody announced that Dr. Paul T. Williams, a Berkeley, California epidemiologist had conducted a survey of nearly 7,000 male runners showing that for each decade, the average sixfoot-tall man put on 3.3 pounds, and his waist grew by about threefourths of an inch. From this data, Dr. Williams deduced the idea that men who run an average of 10 miles a week at age 30 should run 24 miles a week by age 40 and 38 miles a week by age 50. According to this scenario, by age 100, a normal man should run 108 miles per 192

week, or an average of 15 miles per day, for the main purpose of keeping his tummy trim! Such arrogant stupidity is breathtaking!

Metabolizing Calories
Typical advice given people interested in losing weight is: Calories in equal calories out. Not true! For example, I often notice on cold days that when I first begin to ride my bike once around Central Park (which is 6.1 miles), Im cold. At least one of my thumbs (and if its really cold, both thumbs) may begin to feel numb around halfway. Then as I go on, I get warmer. 3/4 of the way around I may notice that I want to open my jacket and let the air cool me off, at which time my numb thumb isnt numb any more! What explains this phenomenon? The heat I feel indicates that potential (that is, stored) energy is being converted or broken down (metabolized) into the kinetic (or working) energy that drives my muscles, and thereby into heat. Calories are measurements of heat. Therefore, the heat that warms up my body from numbing cold into not so numbing cold represents calories being burned. If I start to get cold immediately after I begin my ride around the park (and remain cold half way around), and then begin to warm up toward the end of my ride, it follows that energy in my body is being created at a different rate at the beginning of an exercise than at the end. In other words, calories burn at different rates, depending on how long an exercise has been going on. For example, at a constant rate of increase, you might burn less than 1/2 of a calorie during the first minute of intense exercise, 3 calories during the seventh minute, 6 calories during the 13th minute, 7 calories during the 17th minute, 10 calories during the 23rd minute, and 13 calories during the 30th minute. (You will go on burning calories in diminishing degrees even after finishing your exercisealthough you expend no effort to do so!) These variations are huge although the total number of calories burned up in a half an hour at a variable rate would still typically be around 200. If, on the other hand, the rate of calories burned were constant during intense exercise, then (1) my fingers wouldnt go from warm to numb to warm (they would go from warm to numb to frostbitten!); and (2) I would burn a constant seven calories during every moment of exercise and nothing thereafter (as is implied whenever anyone says I just burned off 400 calories at the gym!). The upshot is that nothing significant can be learned by trying to calculate how many calories you burn while exercising. There are so many other variables involved in counting calories burned that the whole subject is fraught with inaccuracies and ab193

surd deductions. How large a portion of food are you eating compared to what the box says one portion should equal? What is your average metabolic rate? Does that rate change at different times of the day? Does it change according to how much you weigh? Does it change according to your age? Have you exercised intensely for exactly 30 minutes? What happens at only 20 minutes? What happens at 45 minutes? Have you taken it easy during part of the intense exercise? (Was there any intense exercise?) How many times did you take a break? Over a month or more, if you do only one exercise for a constant period of time, and eat a constant daily diet, you may begin to be able to calculate accurately whether your exercising metabolizes your food sufficiently, or if you need to cut down on food, or speed up on exercise, or both. However, if you begin adding several variable exercises to one another, or eat a variable diet, then trying to calculate how many calories you burned at the gym is impossible. Therefore, to claim that calories in equal calories out is a meaningless statement. Food and exercise are separate things whose effect on each other, for all practical purposes, is incalculable and therefore of no interest.

FAQ: Should I snack between meals?

What They say:

Its important that you never let yourself get hungry, because if you do, you might get out of control and go off your diet. The best way to control your hunger is by snacking between meals. Of course, you should only snack on approved foods, like tasteless biscuits, stringy veggies, and sugarless fruit. Always leave healthy treats sitting around the kitchen for the kiddies to munch on. Sure, the little darlings are gonna just love those carrot and celery sticks! Theyre so fresh and crunchy! (except when you leave them on countertopsso they can be seen and eaten, but where they become warm and soggy!). There are some important health issues involved, as well. Snacking gets you used to eating smaller lunches and dinners, and thats not bad. It also balances your sugar levels better, allowing you to avoid hypoglycemia (and maybe even diabetes!). In other words, you shouldnt eat less than five meals per day: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two in-between snacks. Therefore, by satisfying your hunger between regular meals, youll be satisfied at lunch and dinner by eating smaller portions. 194

_______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: This advice is so horrendous as to defy belief! Snacking is truly terrible for a number of reasons. Among them are:

Rather than sating your hunger with snacks, youre much more likely both to stimulate and reward your enhanced desire for the pleasures of eating. Snacking is unlikely to decrease your portion sizes at lunch or dinner. All that will happen is that youll eat more. When food specialists (that is, mainly, professional nutritionists) encourage their clients to snack, theyre giving people official permission to continue their habit of eating more food every day. People who snack tend to move from one snack food to another depending on what they buy on impulse at the store. Therefore, rather than being content to snack on rabbit food at the beginning of a diet, most people move quickly on to cookies, candy, and worse. By that time, it quickly becomes impossible to control their eating habits. Perhaps the worst snacks of all are the small chocolate candy bars supposedly filled with nutrients for people on diets. Who can eat only one of those suckers? Some people have been known to eat a whole box in a single sitting! Advertisers who appeal to peoples hunger, in order to sell diet food that will only make them fatter, are truly contemptible! The best way for you to control your sugar levels and avoid hypoglycemia is to eat the same three balanced meals per day. You will actually have pretested your meals not only for their weight control virtues, but for how well they control your sugar levels. Thus, a regularized 3-meal menu is the best precaution against hypoglycemic reactions and the problems that can go with them (such as so-called carbohydrate addiction and adult-onset diabetes). In fact, its quite possible (although this theory hasnt been properly tested) that a correctly regular-

195

ized menu can be considered an ideal preventive measure against sugar problems.
In other words, dont get into the habit of snacking on a regular basis. If youre offered something or see something occasionally, and you eat it, whos to know? However, if you start (or continue to) snack regularly, everyones going to know, because youre going to get, or continue to be, fat! Also, dont assume you have any defenses against the temptation to snack. Nobody does! Therefore, dont buy snack food when you go to the market. Dont allow it in your house. Get rid of everything you have that can turn into a snack. (If you have to eat it, do so this once, but dont replace it!) Finally, if someone in your house is too fat, dont put stumbling blocks before the blind! Get rid of all snack foods!

The Numbers Games

In most respects, the preventive medicine game is as speculative as the stock market. Theres nothing wrong with playing the stock market as long as you understand (1) its a game and not a serious science, (2) its not always honest, and (3) many of its theorists preach nonsense. Remember the crash in 1929 that nearly ruined the country? The fundamental economy is sound, President Hoover kept saying. Nevertheless, what goes up can tumble down. Even great racehorses stumble and are shot. Theres nothing wrong with playing the preventive medicine game as long as you dont take it seriously. Unfortunately, most people who play the game believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that its immoral to get sick or die, and if you play your cards right you can live forever. Ask them! Science keeps coming up with new thingswho knows? Why not? You dont win if you dont play! You may have nothing better to do with your life than try to prolong it. You may think by maximizing your intake of pills, oils, herbs, and powders youre maximizing your chances of good health. Like a serious gambler, you (or your clever doctor) may have developed the perfect system. Nevertheless, all systems fail in the end. All youre doing is putting all your chips on all the numbers, thinking that when the wheel spins around again, your chances of a long and healthy life increase. Not true! The opposite! If you drive past Las Vegas or Atlantic City billboards touting this or that hotel, youll soon get the impression that your lifes fortune is waiting for you in one of those casinos. Millions of dollars are at stake, buthey, you cant win the lottery if you dont place your bet! Gambling is a poor way to manage your life, because life is not 196

roulette. The odds against living forever are 100% against you. The more bets you place, the sooner you deplete your base. Eventually the house wins it all. The scientific-sounding speculative numbers game in the health field seems to have magical aspects. Thus, counting survival rates or triglycerides, like counting face cards or price-to-earnings ratios, lends prestige to those who count the beans. Longevity, however, like winning at the stock market or at craps, is a dicey and temporary business. Success at gambling or at life is a result of elements on which only fools depend: factors such as inheritance, environment, and imponderable luck. Thus, the promise of good health and long years, although some people are rewarded, is like the promise of disposable income during retirement that every stockbroker promises. Its never a sure thing. Read the fine print. Too long a life can be a curse, and some peoples wealth is wasted stupidly on intractable pain. Does a rich fool live a worthwhile life? Do you want to live to be 120 and spend two decades in a nursing home, helpless, uncomfortable, impoverished, abandoned, incontinent, and gaga? Is that how all those push-ups and vitamin pills and broccoli for dinner and monthly investment plan payments reward you? There are at least 1,000 good stocks you can buy, and every one of them may fail. There are at least 1,000 good for you supplements available in the average health food store, and any one of them might prolong someones agony. People fear death and impoverishment inordinately. They covet things when they should covet joy, euphoria, pleasure, and happinessall of which are evanescent, and none of which youre aware for more than a few seconds at a time. The clever gambler loves the game, lives in the moment, and says: You cant take it with you so why not enjoy it? So go ahead and play your games. Gamble on good health, if you like! However, if youre not enjoying yourself, theres somethings wrong. Take note.

Generating Self-Discipline
Believe it or not, the major self-discipline problems youll have motivating your fitness and nutritional routines every day will have little to do with the discipline required to execute the physical labor of exercising or restraining yourself from eating improperly. The problem of self-discipline, when it comes to exercise, has more to do with getting yourself to the point of committing to do the exercise. Similarly, you need more self-discipline in a supermarket, stopping yourself from purchasing tempting snacks you shouldnt buy, than you do at home. (If you dont buy it, you wont eat it!) If you go to a health club every day, youll probably want to change into leisure clothes first. Then youll have to walk or drive to 197

the club. Once inside a health club, your habits naturally take over. When you dont have to think about what youre doing, no discipline is required. The only real problem youre likely to have will be getting there. Thus the major self-discipline youll have to exert (at least at first) will be to change your clothes and travel to the club! If you ride your bicycle six miles a day, youll probably want to change your clothes and shoes before you go out. Then, if you live high up in the city, youll have to take your bicycle downstairs, which can be a complicated nuisance. Schlepping a bicycle down a service elevator in an apartment building is such a bother that it may require the major part of your self-discipline to permit people to see you dressed in skimpy clothes and a silly-looking helmet. However, by the time youre pedaling down the street as fast as an automobile, youll experience a sense of freedom you cant possibly get in an elevator. Once on course, youll feel no need for discipline at all. Youll simply pedal for six miles, cheerfully expending the effort you need to mount steep hills, and be glad you can do it. Even if you only practice aerobic dancing in your living room, youll still have to adjust your clothing, clear the area for dancing, start the CD or the tape, and so on. More importantly, youll have to prepare yourself psychically to get in the mood for dancing. That effort may continue for several minutes after you start the music. Youll find that these preliminary efforts require more self-discipline than hip-hopping around the living room, once youve gotten into it. The major value of Morning Preparation results from the structure of Steps & Landings. Every time you go from a Step to a Landing and back again, youre beginning another time, because you have to use alternate parts of your brain to go from one psychic effort to the other. It takes self-discipline to alternate these efforts. However, it gets easier (on a particular day) each time you do it. In other words, it takes self-discipline to begin a Step; and it takes self-discipline to give off thinking and return to writing. Therefore, your total of eight items a day will yield 16 reversals, each of which requires less and less self-discipline. By the time youre ready to eat properly portioned meals and exercise for fitness, youll find it less difficult to initiate the preliminary tasks that require the selfdiscipline you need for Acting Well. These examples illustrate how Acting Well is an integrated program where all elements work together to maintain a general level of self-discipline (or motivation). Once youve rehearsed the more difficult preliminary habits of self-discipline often enough that you dont have to think about them any more, youll maintain the easier performance habits for the rest of your life. When audiences witness great acting, the results appear magical to those who dont know how someone can do it time after time. Enjoy the rave reviews!

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The Eye of God

95% of Americans believe in God, and most of them would be astonished to learn that Hindu practitioners of yoga do not. Hinduism is a polytheistic religion. It has no God with a capital G. It has many gods that come from times that preceded the JudeoChristian concept of monotheism. Western practitioners of yoga who include notions of God in their literature do so, by their own admission, as an inauthentic means to attract the American public. (Some of the most highly respected will even frankly admit to a charge of pandering!) Since Acting Well is keenly respectful of, and submissive to, scientific inquiry, you might expect that it would have nothing to do with religion. However, theres nothing incompatible between Acting Well and the practice of any religion at all. They are simply separate things, for there is no religious component that is part of Acting Well. As America is a country in which the separation of church and state is an important part of the nations freedom, Acting Well will never make reference to God or to moral or religious convictions that are not held by every American. Theres an experience that results from practicing Acting Well, however, that might be considered religious. Its the final step of the Morning Preparationcalled the Oculusand it comes as close as you can get to finding God. When you see the Oculus it wont be like seeing the God you learned about as a child. It will be obvious that this presence is one you conjured up yourselfmore like the god-idols that emerging societies worshipped in prehistoric times. It neither created you nor preceded you, and it will not survive your death. It doesnt speak and it cant guide your moral life. Its completely yours, and it cant be shared with anyone. Your Morning Preparation will be like a sacrifice (of your time) to this god; and as close to a private religious ceremony as youre likely to get outside a church, synagogue, mosque, or ashram. Will you come to believe or have faith in this god if you practice Acting Well? Yes, if you reach the final pinnacle of its practice, which is to be able to visualize the Oculus. You will feel its truth, which is to know its existence. Your belief will be as strong as that of many people who are convinced that a personal God watches over them. The Oculus will watch you and witness your performance. Indeed, its watching at this very moment! Its a benign god, not an evil spirit. It will never interfere in your life. It will never hurt you (or punish your sins) nor will it ever help you (by answering prayers). It will simply be there when you look for it during your Morning Preparation, and rarely any other time. How199

ever, the fact that you look for it daily, and that you know it always watches you, is the ultimate source that empowers the resolution to change your life. Its the face of your willpower. The Oculus is not unlike the eye of HAL, Stanley Kubricks computer god in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The effect of seeing it is similar. Its always there, ready to observe, offering no response beyond that which it is programmed (by you) to do. In one respect, it is not unlike the God of the Chassidic Jews, who believe that God depends on Man to worship Him. Theres more to it than that, of course; but those Jews understand something you will come to understand: that the Oculus, as your audience, depends on your performance. This knowledge is more than comforting. When your sights close in on it, its thrilling!

That and Which

After many years of being unaware that I had made up my own, unconventional rules about when to use that and when to use which, I started using the Spelling and Grammar option of Microsoft WORD. I soon discovered that I was making major grammatical errors! I researched the problem on the Internet and began to practice some examples. At first, I had to think about what I did each time. A few weeks later, all at once I became certain of the difference. I no longer had to refer to, or remember any rules, or even think about the problem. I just knew. This sense of certainty mystified me. After all, Id been doing things wrong for at least fifty years! Suddenly, after a few weeks, I started to get it right each time, without thinking, as if Id always known what to do. My certainty came about abruptly, unexpectedly, from out of the blue, giving me possession of a piece of knowledge that I never thought I could possess. (I learned that, generally speaking, use which with commas and that withoutnot that that distinction covers the entire matter!) I now realize what the substance of my newfound knowledge was. There had to be some new brain cells in my head that werent there previously. In other words, learning the difference between that and which isnt just a matter of older brain cells hooking up in new or different ways (in which case the difference wouldnt feel so abrupt or unequivocal), but of new cells patching together old ones in ways that were formerly impossible (or highly improbable) because something just wasnt there. Now it is. Furthermore, I now notice the correct or incorrect usage of that and which every time these choices appear in other peoples writing. The words stand out like sore thumbs, and Ive learned that there are many professional writers who continue to be as confused as I used to be about these words! 200

How can this phenomenon be possible without neurogenesis? Is the difference between choosing between that and which so different from choosing between health-promoting foods in the supermarket and foods that provide only empty calories? Theres no question that my bicycling experiences have changed since I first began them. The whole experience of getting ready to go out to ride has shifted from a semi-embarrassing, uncertain struggle at the service elevator, and considerable energy expended getting around the park, to a pleasant experience to which I look forward, and which I miss when the weather makes it impossible. Ive learned about the subtleties of riding, such as where and when to speed up and slow down, how to stand up while pedaling (which took me years to try!), what to expect along various stretches of the road, and so forth. These bits of knowledge express modes of certainty as strong as those concerning that and which. I now understand, furthermore, why most people are reluctant to exercise and eat healthy. Theyre as uncertain about how to live as I used to be about that and which! I also realize that they could master as much knowledge about life as I have gained recently about grammar if theyd just make the proper effort. The secret is giving your brain a chance to hook up new cells. Understanding and believing in neurogenesis, therefore, can be a step toward healthier living. Once you understand how things work, you can glory in the process when it works so clearly to your advantage.

Does God Exist?

Turning the question into a negative, if you asked me, Does God not exist? my answer would quote President Clinton: It depends upon what the meaning of the word is means. If is means is, and never has been, thats one thing. If it means, there is none, that was a completely true statement. In other words, whether or not you deny the existence of God depends not so much on your belief or non-belief in a Deity as it does on your belief or non-belief in the existence of existence. Do you believe anything exists? If so, try to prove it! On the other hand, if, like any scientist or actor, you realize that when you try to create something (like a fact or a character) through mere words or sheer willpower, you wont get very far. Youll eventually convince yourself that the ideas you have about things you believe exist have more to do with actions you observe (things or people doing something) than about metaphysical states of being that could theoretically be devoid of action (such as unexpressed willpower). Anything not animated cant operate in the Universe. Therefore, animation expressed through action is a ruling factor behind anything 201

whose existence we claim (as in loyalty), believe in (as in ghosts), or measure (as in heat). Therefore, it isnt necessary to decide whether something exists or not. If something has a measurable action, you wont go wrong by claiming it exists. If it has no action (for example, if its imaginary, or assigned a conventional meaning, like the Commonwealth of Massachusetts), then you can believe in it or not, however you wish. However, you cant prove it, and you shouldnt have to. Massachusetts is one of the United States of America. It isnt a Commonwealth (whatever that is). Its only called a Commonwealth. Likewise, God is a conventional representation (or name, like Commonwealth) of what certain religious people believe is the animating force behind the Universe. Perhaps theres no such thing as a centralized animating force behind the Universe. God knows there doesnt have to be such an entity! Who are we to decide there does? The Chassidic Jews, who are the most religious group of people with whom Im familiar, believe that God requires men to worship Him. In effect, worshipful men (and Im afraid the Chassidim are sexists on this point) are required to bring God into existence! If such an ultra-Orthodox group of religious people acknowledge the importance of human religious actions (theyre required to bring God into existence!), can we deny the imaginary and conventional (that is, socially agreed-upon) nature of the Deity? The important thing to resist is anyone who claims that belief in the existence of God is natural, obvious, inevitable, or the right thing for America. That person is assuming that existence can exist without action. Theres nothing un-American about believing in God. However, politicizing your beliefs is against the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. In other words, its un-American. Likewise, if anyone tries to convince you to believe in Acting Well, understand that if Acting Well becomes a quasi-religion for certain people, they, too, are acting in an un-American manner. Acting Well is only a name (a convention) for a collection of techniques that can motivate your compliance to a healthier lifestyle. If you follow it, it will work. If you dont, it wont exist... ...for you.

Gorge and Grow Thin!

Lets get one thing straight: Headlines like the one above are lies! There are no such things as fun diets, or ways to melt pounds and keep them off forever. All that tabloid self-help talk is advertising bullshit, and this book isnt. Its a way to help you find your way; and if you take it, you win. Believe it or not, thats it. Since there are billions of people in the world, many of them 202

overweight, there must be millions of ways to lose excess pounds and keep them off. But theres only one you; and so theres only one right way to make the improvements in your body (and brain!) that you desire, fulfilling your wishes to be thinner, younger looking, healthier, and more attractive that led you to open this book in the first place. The rest of the book will help you discover and create that unique and singular program: the one and only program that can work for you. Theres no trick involved here. Thousands of diet and self-help books have been published with nutritional formulas, programs, methods, systems, breakthroughs, lists of foods to eat or avoid, scientific theories, and all sorts of assorted advice, much of it contradictory hoo-ha, telling you what to do, what someone else did, and whats supposed to workfor some peoplesome of the time. Unless youre the author of one of those books, not a single one of them will work for you permanently. No one has yet invented a diet that works. Not one single person. Ditto for exercise programs; and the same for stress reduction techniques. There are only a couple of rules you can extract from Americas expensive experience with the self-help movement, and they are:

No one knows anything, No one has any willpower, We all lie to ourselves, and Nothing works!

Theres one exception to these rules, and its the one that proves them all: Your way will work. Its the only way that will. I offer myself and my own testimonial as incontrovertible anecdotal evidence! I worked on some of the programs youll find in this book for more than thirty years. Nevertheless, by age 50 I was overweight (by about 15 pounds, after numerous diets failed), had hypertension (for which I took beta blockers for four years), swallowed 12 aspirins a day for joint pains (which one doctor misdiagnosed as arthritis), got indigestion from eating rich food, was almost always sedentary, had difficulty sleeping, and got pretty stressed out from overwork most of the time. Then a few years ago I discovered my way. I started cycling six miles every day, lost the weight, threw away the pills, changed doctors (my new doctor now calls me ridiculously healthy), ignored and forgot about the pain (which went away because of the exercise), slept just fine, rarely took antacid pills, never took laxatives, was neither lonely, unhappy, nor unloved, and almost always felt relaxed. Moreover, some wonderful things started happening to me psychologically and socially that I knew were related to my new life. I felt 203

more a part of the world outside my Manhattan apartment. Now Im sure Ill never go back to my old ways, and that Ill be healthy right to the end of my days. (Of course, genetics help: both my parents lived into their 90s.) So, thats my story. Now, whats yours?

Quick Weight Loss

What difference does it make how quickly you can lose weight? All you prove through quick weight loss is that you can quit overeating (or smoking or drinking) and then, when youve proven what a strong character you have, go back to practicing your bad habits. You dont prove the most important thing: that you can sustain your objective! Its much better to lose 15 pounds in a year than to lose 20 pounds in two weeks; because if you follow a quick weight loss diet, in most cases youll gain back most of the weight before long. The problem with quick weight loss diets is that people undertake them because theyve found every diet theyve gone on so onerous that they want to get it over with quickly. They think that once theyve lost the weight itll be easy to maintain their ideal weight from then on. For example, if you weigh 170 pounds now, and have been that weight for the past two years; and if you weighed 150 pounds in college and want to get back to that level, you may figure that if you go on a quick weight loss diet in order to lose 20 pounds in six weeks youll be able to quit the diet when youve reached your goal and be able to return to the menu youre currently onand stay at 150 pounds forever! After all, you stayed at 170 pounds (more or less) for two years and perhaps only gained two pounds. Therefore, you should just have to return to where you want to be, and then things can get back to normal and you can eat exactly what youre eating nowat least for the next 20 years. The concept makes perfect sense. It happens to be completely wrong. What you havent figured on is that your metabolism has changed since you were young, and changed even more since you gained all that weight. Therefore, youre operating according to different rules. Your body wants to be at the weight you are now, based on the level of its physical activity. To lower your weight to a different level you must increase your physical activity and reduce your intake to a level that neither you nor any doctor can predict is correct except through months of experimentation. In other words, no diet books, recipes, prescriptions, drugs, or advice can tell you what your levels of food intake should be. Only you can determine those levels (based on how much weight you gain or lose over a period of adhering to a daily menu), and it may take 204

you months of quasi-scientific attention to what youre doing before you figure out how best to meet your needs. So, whats the great hurry? And what are you waiting for? If you practice Acting Well, youll enjoy the benefits of increased consciousness that cushion your intake restrictions and help you create your daily lifes menu that includes only the sensible foods you love. Then, if you include strenuous physical activity in every one of your days from now on (which you must do if you want to maintain an ideal weight), you can take as much as a year or even two to achieve your healthiest weight level. At that point, it will be a piece of (possibly dietetic) cake to maintain your ideal weight forever.

Costumes for the World Walk

Every actor needs to be concerned about costumes, not just because it impresses the audience, but because it helps to make the actor feel like the character being portrayed. It is this latter function we want you to think about. If you go out for a World Walk in the city or the country, what will you wear that will make you feel like you? When you do Morning Preparation, the first thing you should do (before Listening) is to remember how you felt the previous day when out of doors. That feeling can be conjured or enhanced by remembering what you were wearing and how you felt wearing the particular garment you chose. You may already have plenty of clothes in your wardrobe that will be perfect for the purpose; or you may feel you need to augment your wardrobe by purchasing special clothing that will enhance your memory and make you feel special when you go outside. Try to make the clothes you wear for Morning Preparation more special by not wearing them out of doors. Dont choose any garment for the purpose, catch-as-catch-can. Choose special garments every time you go outside. You may have two or three selections from which to choose, depending on the weather, etc. If you wish to use clothes you already possess, then youll have to bless the garments you wish to wear. Blessing a garment means examining and looking at it to see whether it makes you look your best and is the most appropriate thing to wear for a particular occasion. The fabric should feel a certain way. Avoid polyester clothing or clothing that looks like its made out of luxurious fabric but doesnt feel that way next to your skin. If you only possess cheap garments, you should invest in new ones. However, try to find an inexpensive clothing store that offers a huge selection of garments from which to choose. Spend a lot of time going through the racks until you find exactly what suits you for the 205

purpose. Maybe only one-percent of the garments will qualify; but if you take your time and keep going back over the same garments, youll probably find what you want. Jeans, shorts, gymnasium outfits, and most casual wear appropriate for fitness exercises wont make you look your best. Outstandingly handsome men and women may look great in that kind of clothing; but they look even better in the kind of clothing recommended here. Pay attention to accessories! The wrong jewelry, shoes, womens handbags, scarves, belts, etc. mainly reveal bad taste. Once youre dressed, try to walk among people feeling proud of how you look. Think about the pride as you walk, and it will affect your gait. Walk where youll encounter people, but avoid large crowds. Many African-Americans master this kind of walking best. Men do it better than women do, although the actor playing Patsy, on Absolutely Fabulous (Joanne Lumley) probably had the technique down better than anyone else did. Walk as if you know exactly where youre going and own the sidewalk. Dont loll, dont walk too fast, and enjoy the stroll. Be polite. Smile a little. Try to remember what you see. To master the right walk is extremely important!

The Second Lunch

Over one-half of the American population is currently overweight. (This percentage is even worse among African-Americans.) Most people dont want to be overweight, but they cant control themselves. Clearly, something in the American culture is terribly wrong. Although there are many reasons for this alarming situation, one factor stands out. Most people dont have eating problems with breakfast or lunch. They tend to eat the same thing every morning and afternoonoften exactly the same thing (although, if you ask them, theyll claim they must have variety in their daily menus and that they couldnt stand it if they were required to eat the same thing day after day). Furthermore, most people dont overeat at breakfast or lunch. Its even common to find overweight people who claim they never eat breakfastalthough this claim may be inaccurate, since many people lie to themselves (and others) without realizing it. Its also a terrible idea to skip breakfast if you really want to control your weight. The problem in American culture is dinner; and the problem with dinner is twofold:

Most American dinners are served family style, which usually means that more food is prepared than necessary. (This problem usually doesnt occur at
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breakfast or lunch.) Those who prepare the food tend to want their family not to waste what they prepared for dinner. Therefore, these servers offer seconds and even third helpings (about as helpful as a sword through the heart!) to whoever wants to have more. It becomes almost rude to turn down these servers, as if not stuffing yourself to the point of discomfort indicates that you dont like someones cooking. For certain reasons (having to do with how the rising middle classes of the Nineteenth Century tried to imitateincorrectlythe serving habits of royalty) Americans have come to believe that dinners should be balanced. Thus, the typical dinner is considered incomplete without the following five mounds of food: (a) a salad or appetizer; (b) a healthy portion of meat, chicken, or fish; (c) a mound of potatoes or similar starch; (d) a mound of cooked vegetables; and finally, (e) a dessert.

The problem is that unless someone is trying to gain weight, no one should eat more than three mounds of food at dinner, especially people trying to maintain a healthy weight. (The mounds should be large enough, of course, so that no one will ever go hungry!) When you add to this cultural absurdity the problem of seconds and thirds night after night, the forces that cause people to gain weight become overwhelming. The solution to this problem is actually quite simple. Since most people dont have problems with breakfast or lunch, everyone should simply not eat dinner. They should eat two lunches. The first lunch should be consumed around noon, and the second (consisting of entirely different foods, of course) should be served between six and eight oclock. Dinner should be abolished! This solution is more than a modest proposal. Im serious! Lets do it! Ive been doing it for years. I call my dinner (which usually consists of a mound of salad, a mound of pasta with sauce, and a light dessert) dinner; but really, its a second lunch. I recommend it highly! Yum!

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The Facts Behind the Cost of Being Fat

In November 2000, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) claimed that the prevalence of overweight and obesity among the adult population had continued to increase from approximately 25 percent of the U.S. adult population by the late Seventies (1976-80) to a startling 33 percent by 1991. Approximately 40 percent of women and 24 percent of men were trying to lose weight at any given time. Overweight/obesity prevalence continued to increase from 1988 to 1994 by 3.3 percentage points for men and 3.6 percentage points for women from 1988-1994. Similar trends were indicated for children and adolescents. More current NHANES figures showed overweight/obesity levels of approximately 11 percent for both children and adolescents. Overweight/obesity prevalence seemed to be increasing annually by nearly one percent. Twenty-five percent of men and nearly forty percent of women were then trying to lose weight. The prevalence of overweight/obesity was of great concern because it had been associated with the increased risk of several chronic and life-threatening diseases including type II diabetes, coronary artery disease, hypertension, and certain types of cancer. The importance of controlling overweight/obesity and promoting safe and effective weight loss treatments was heightened by several clinical studies that demonstrated how even modest amounts of weight loss (5-10 percent of body weight) could result in significant improvement of these co-morbidity factors (that is, diseases associated with obesity). As it was, health problems related to overweight/obesity accounted for $70 billion annually in health costs. In addition, consumers were spending $33 billion per year trying to lose weight or to prevent weight gain. Adding these two figures together created the basis for the often-quoted figure of $100 billion annually in health care costs and money spent on weight loss products and services as the enormous overall cost of overweight/obesity. Almost all of the $100 billion was wasted each year, however! In controlled settings, although participants who remained in weight loss programs lost approximately 10 percent of their weight, one-third to two-thirds of the weight was regained within one year. Almost all of it was regained within five years. The reason for this gigantic waste of time, effort, and money is stunningly simple: People on weight loss programs generally either fail to exercise at all; or they exercise sporadically (for example, most days of the week); or they exercise while losing weight, but give up their exercise discipline after theyve met their goal weight; or they exercise insufficientlythat is, without touching the envelope, much less pushing it. 208

Without daily strenuous exercise, their metabolism changes little, if at all. Thus, they have to constantly go hungry in order (1) to lose weight, and, more significantly (2) keep the excess weight from coming back. After a while, the degree of denial required to stay slim becomes so onerous that these people simply give up and let themselves gain weight again. The reason that practitioners of Acting Well can lose weight fairly easily (although slowly) and not gain it back is that they dont deny themselves in the first place in order to lose the weight. Therefore, they dont have to deny themselves in order to keep the weight from coming back!

The Sins of the Doctors

Many health professions (such as medicine, professional health organizations, health clubs, nutritionists, and personal trainers) designate four essential training components: aerobic, strength, endurance, and flexibility. These professionals usually insist that their clients practice all four components separately at least a few times a week. No one ever suggests a single, short, daily, universal exercise that combines all four training components. (Most professionals would suggest that such an exercise doesnt exist.) However, 20-30 minutes on a bicycle every day, which includes 68 minutes of climbing steep hills while standing up (or an equivalent workout on an exercise bicycle), is probably the best possible exercise, because when done properly it combines all four training componentsor, more accurately, makes all but aerobic activity unnecessary. Unfortunately, one must practice daily on a bike (or perform any other universal exercise) for many months or years before all four elements kick in effectively. Thus, if someone is just starting out creating an exercise routine, an instructor is bound to design a lengthy program that can be efficiently supervised (and efficiently charged for!) to make sure to cover all the bases. For example, if a client strains too much, muscle damage may ensue. Therefore, flexibility training is usually suggested in order to prevent or heal any damage from a beginners mistakes. To provide a meaningful (and chargeable) program of this kind usually involves expensive equipment in special locations (such as an indoor gymnasium) as well as several hours to get to the place, change clothes (twice!), shower, and go about the place moving from machines to free weights to a pool to an aerobics and/or yoga class. Almost no one can devote this much time to these many activities on a daily basis! Therefore, the American Heart Association (among other professional groups) has declared that most days of the week is good enough for exercise. All of the thinking behind these strategies is self-serving, greed209

based, and destructive. None of it is based on science! If it takes years to exercise efficiently enough to get all you need from a 30-minute daily workout, whats the rush? Why should beginning exercisers be treated like professionals?except that not as much money can be made from coaching them if theyre simply instructed how to ride their bicycles every day, no further instruction required? Doctors seem never to insist that their patients exercise daily! However, if a person doesnt exercise 30 minutes per day every day, that person cannot create a proper fitness habit! For those people who have created a fitness habit, an exception will have no negative effect. However, for people who have not created such a habit, taking a day or two off becomes the habit. 90% of the time discipline quickly sinks to zero. These statements arent scientific findings. Theyre part of human nature. Theyre true of strong individuals as well as weak ones. No one is exempt. The appalling indulgence that the medical profession offers its patients (namely, to permit regular days off during the week from exercising) isnt just wrong-headed and unscientific. Its contemptible.

Self-Help Book
Ive just been reading a recently published inspirational book by a celebrity author (with no discernible writing talent) and wondering how the hell she got the thing printed. Obviously, publishers know how to exploit celebrities (the book cost me $32!), and obviously, she believes what she says. But whoever reads her book will be hard pressed to grasp a single thread of action in all the nostrums, generalities, panaceas, and well-meaning, but meaningless advice she lays on her readers with trowels of cheerfulness, balanced by an occasional But oh my God, what Ive been through! I mean, how do you Change what you can and accept what you cant change? (Alcoholics Anonymous has been trying it for years!) How do you Look for the joy in the day? And if you find it, what then? Why is what I want to say so different from all the other self-help books I might have picked up? Why do those books make me so angry?or so sad, when I think of all the decent people who buy them hoping for some way to reform themselves, get more out of life, be a better person, friend, lover, or parent? I didnt set out to change myself, but I changed in ways that now seem miraculous. I didnt buy someones book to follow as a guide. I did it on my own, step by step, without realizing that in my 50s, I was making permanent life changes; that I was growing healthier, happier, and stronger than I had ever been. Why should I write a book explaining what I did if it wasnt books that worked for me? 210

The reason is clear. To set down the story is part of the process of change. Ive kept notes on what I did, and theyve accumulated to such an extent that I now have to pull them together and share this new knowledgeor else store them on shelves in boxes that someone, someday, will simply burn. Thus Im writing this book for me, so that part of me can live instead of disappear. If you learn anything from what I tell you, youll start to keep your own notes. If you dont base a book on them, or an article or a poem, or just chat with someone about this work on the Internet, at least youll be motivated to teach your children or your friends the lessons you learned from embarking on this work. If your life is transformed as a result of what you do after reading about what I did, it wont be the book or I that inspired the change. For I have no maps of hidden treasure to share. Unlike the cheerful author above, whos thrilled to share her nuggets of wisdom, I can only point the way to where the gold lies buried in the earth. Its up to you to tunnel in the mines. Theyre hot, dark, and frightening; but theyre real places where you can discover wonderful things. June 1997 _________________________________

Roy Scheider
May 7, 2000 Ronald R. Masden, M.D. President and Medical Director Anchor-International Foundation Dear Dr. Masden: As an actor, I was genuinely pleased to learn that your organization is developing acting techniques for health purposes unrelated to my profession. Until I became aware that these techniques can be used in cardiac rehabilitation and preventive cardiology programs, I wouldnt have guessed that practicing them could make a difference between life and death. When I first heard about your foundations work I was reminded of an experience that happened to me nine years ago when I was about to become a father again at the age of 58. Id been a full-time smoker whod quit many times (without success) when I realized that I would be playing the role of Father probably for the rest of my life. I distinctly remember the moment I crossed Sixth Avenue and 51st Street in Manhattan, smoking a cigarette, when I looked at it and said to myself, Roy Scheider doesnt smoke! I quit that very moment. I waited a few weeksit stuck. I never picked it up again. It was simply not in character with my new role! 211

Its exciting to think that people can lose weight and keep it off, manage stress, conform to an exercise regimen, and generally manage their lives better if they learn how to prepare their character using techniques that were articulated a century ago by the great Russian director, Konstantin Stanislavski. Im honored that my profession can contribute to the worlds health in this way; and I personally support your efforts to bring this applied knowledge back to Russia, the great country where it was so richly developed. Sincerely,

_________________________________

"Deepwood" Mount Washington, Kentucky 40047

May 11, 2000 Dear Roy Scheider: I was pleased and honored to receive your letter of support for Anchor-International Foundations preventive cardiology programs. As an interventional cardiologist performing as many as 700 procedures a year, let me assure you how fascinated and impressed I was by your distinguished portrayal of probably the most famous myocardial infarction victim in all cinema! Of course All That Jazz was produced before wed discovered many of the revolutionary techniques now in common use, some of which I had the honor to help develop. Im relieved to learn that youve abandoned smoking, and that youve been able to adjust your art of living so impressively as to become a veritable poster boy for healthier lifestyles in mature adults. Your example will be especially important in Russia, where mens lives commonly end before age 60. We doctors tend to pay more attention to curing illness than promoting wellness. And so I must admit that as a cardiologist I had to refocus my thinking when Marshall Yaeger brought the fundamentals of Acting Well to my attention in 1997. Im convinced that, because of your fame and persuasive 212

talents, your support of these techniques as a nonphysician will save and improve more peoples lives than anyone can imagine. Sincerely,

Ronald R. Masden, M.D.

Menu Planning
Americans suffer from the belief that they need to jump from food to food throughout the week as if they had to choose their menu from a constantly changing tapas table. They seem to harbor the superstitious belief that if they dont skip from healthy food to healthy food theyll fail to get enough of the right nutrients to stay alive. This idea is absurd and unhealthy. If you plan properly and stick to the right menu, youre far more likely to get enough of the nutrients you need than if you occasionally get this and occasionally get that essential nutrient, but dont get any nutrient often enough to meet the average minimum required amount. Part of the problem may be the fact that packagers and nutritionists tend to specify minimum daily amounts of nutrients needed, basing their figures on what they think the average American needs to get on the average. The implication is that, although you should have a certain amount of this and a certain amount of that every day, there is no one food that contains every essential nutrient. Therefore, you need to have a number of foods every day. Since theres a lot more food in food than its essential nutrients, in order to get the right amount of every nutrient you need every day, you would have to eat far too much extra food to keep a slim figure. Therefore, you are allowed to skip around ingesting twice as much of this nutrient on Monday and none of it on Tuesday. This system seems logical, but its a terrible idea! For one thing, it encourages the variety-ism that leads directly to overeating because it prevents people from being able to figure out their appropriate portion sizes. What you need to do is to stop thinking you can average out your nutrients over the week and accept the idea that you must get an exact amount of the nutrients you decide are important for you, and make sure that you get them every day. Thus, you must include in your daily menu, on a repeating basis, the same foods every day so that youre sure to meet a weekly requirement. This system is a matter of controlled balance vs. an uncontrolled shotgun approach (trying to hit every necessary item by means of variety spread over several days). 213

A steady, balanced, controlled menu is healthier than eating an uncontrolled variety of foods hoping to catch as catch can. Thus, the key to enjoying healthy food is to spend time (several months, at least!) to discover what and where to buy nutritious foods that youll love enough to eat constantly and exclusively. That method solves both the problem of what nutrients to include in your menu and the more serious problem of determining proper portion sizes for every meal. Without knowing exactly what your proper portion sizes are for every meal (determined entirely through experimentation, not theory!), no one can ever gain control over his or her weight.

FAQ: Nutrients and Menus

Can I get all the nutrients I need and still lose weight if I have to follow the same menu every day? _______________________________________________________ What They say:

You cant possibly stay hale and hearty sticking to exactly the same foods day after day, especially when youre on a diet! You would have to eat so much every day that youd gain weight for sure! Besides that, certain foods have particular values for certain people (such as cooked tomatoes that prevent prostate cancer). You dont have to eat those foods every day just to get those values. In other words, you need and should insist on variety in your menu to get every possible nutrient you could need! Youll miss some for sure if you stick to an identical daily menu.

Therefore, you need to play round robin every day, and keep circulating your diet in order to eat as many foods as you can in a week (or a month or a year). _______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says: Human evolution didnt know anything about nutrition. People ate whatever was at hand, and the diets of primitive people were much the same from day to day. It wasnt until recently, with incredible affluence and market pressures, that the food industry began convincing people to choose their food from many sources, and constantly to try out new products. In other words, the human race survived without nutritionists telling them they had to eat a variety of foods. In addition, just because large doses of trace chemicals that are found in certain foods may ap214

pear to inhibit cancer in laboratory rats, the public shouldnt be misled into thinking that occasionally eating these foods will prevent cancer. That conclusion is just silly. Therefore, theres no theoretical reason why eating the same menu day after day will either harm you, or that eating a variety of foods will be helpful. In fact, variety is counterproductive because (1) it doesnt promote your getting better and better at preparing your food; (2) it removes any semblance of control in finding out what foods you should eat, and in what quantities, in order to lose or maintain weight; and (3) encouraging a variety of food in your daily diet may encourage eating obsessions, which nobody should want. _______________________________________________________ More on this subject: If you wish to ingest vitamins and minerals on a daily basis as an insurance policy against failing to get all the nutrients you need from your daily menu, then feel free to spend the money to buy them (for example, I do). However, be careful what you ingest! You may have a health condition (such as hemochromatosis, which I have) that requires you to ingest only specially formulated, hard-to-find vitaminmineral formulas (for which I have constantly to search). In most cases, however, we believe that by eating plenty of fruits and vegetables youll get all the nutrients you need. Food supplements cant really take the place of the real thing and should never be depended on to do so!

Character
James Hillman (author of The Force of Character and the Lasting Life) would have us believe that everyone has a unique character that grows ripe with age. Thus one of the advantages of growing old is that we can finally discover our essence and know who we truly are. Derek Bickerton, writing about this book, points out some of the problems with this argument by pointing out what Hillman tells us character is not: Character isnt our bodies or our minds; these change, but character doesnt. It isnt ego, Self or identity, for these are bare abstractions, telling us nothing of the human being they supposedly inhabit and govern. It has nothing to do with occupation, age, gender, religion, nationality, income, I.Q., diagnosis. Its not strength of character la William Bennett; Hillman devotes a chapter...to stripping the notion of character from the moralistic overtones imposed on it by the Victorians. If character is anything at all, it seems to boil down to the sum of unique differences and individual oddities that each person exhibits.... Perhaps all that unifies character is your idea of your 215

character. But then who is the you that has that idea (or that character, if it comes to that)? We are exhorted to study character, yet the author never explains how one would set about studying anything so slippery and elusive. Character isnt as slippery as all that, for its one of those things, like consciousness, where everyone knows what it is but few people agree on its definition. Probably the best definition of character was given by a selfcharacterized broken down acting teacher, Herbert Berghof (who was my chief mentor). Tell me what you do and I will tell you who you are, he said. This theatrical explanation of dramatic character (which merely says that character is action) works just fine on stage or off. You are what youre in the habit of doing. For example, if some extraordinary circumstance comes up thats never happened to you before, and you rise to the occasion, saving someones life by putting yourself in harms way, for example, then people will say that youre a person of real character. Your action reacting to extraordinary circumstances indicates that you will habitually behave in exemplary ways, which is what we often mean by having character. Character cannot be Hillmans idea of your character, for such a thing does not exist except by spinning through your head on those rare occasions when you become consciously self-aware. Such a spinner could never get you to rise to any occasion; it would be purely reflective and lead to no action whatsoever. Character isnt a noun, its a verb; or more specifically, its a gerund. Character isnt who you are; its what youre doing at any particular time, which you tend to do habitually. Its how you act, how you react, and generally how you strut and fret upon your stage of life hopefully making more than sound and fury.

FAQ: Do I have to make a commitment?

What They say: In order to stay on a diet, the first thing you have to do is make a commitment. Then you have to stick with it. In other words, your commitment is your conscious decision to make. Once you make it, you should be able to carry it out.

Therefore, dont tell us you cant stick to a diet! Youre awake! Youre intelligent! Why cant you carry through on a decision that you, yourself, make? _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: The motivations to stick to healthy habits (not just diets and daily 216

exercises, but such things as drinking enough liquids, flossing, etc.) have nothing to do with making conscious decisions. These habits can only result from programming your unconscious to comply with needs and activities you set up on a daily basis. Creating these habits can take weeks or months before your unconscious becomes convinced it has to do themor it wont feel comfortable (for example, not feeling fully clean if you dont brush your teeth after breakfast). Your subconscious then simply does these things without thinking; and it feels uncomfortable when its thwarted from completing them. In other words, once you have to start thinking about what youre supposed to eat, or what youre supposed to do for todays exercise, youve lost the game completely! Youre like an actor who goes up on lines and starts wandering around the stage not knowing what to do. You didnt do your homework! Therefore, you must simply practice your routines until you know them by heart. Those routines cannot be filled with variable choices you have to think about (such as performing different exercises on different days, or eating at different restaurants every night). Actors cant memorize a different script for each night of the week! Therefore you must regularize your life in areas of health, get really good at preparing your food and at your fitness exercise, learn the virtue of patience, and appreciate small victories that lead to ultimate triumphs. _______________________________________________________ More on this subject: Acting Well is the application of acting techniques that program the unconscious to comply with healthy nutrition and fitness habits. Although the objective of Acting Well is to program the unconscious, the method by which the programming is done is highly conscious. In an analogous manner, an actor may rehearse a part many times in order consciously to choose the most appropriate actions and memorize the lines. After several weeks, however, an actors performance should become so automatic, that by the time an audience observes the play, the actors moment-to-moment conscious determination (which might interfere with the actors emotional life) is no longer required. The Stanislavski system of acting is an excellent tool to program unconscious motivations that lead to good dietary habits and daily exercise as well as other compliant health measures, such as drinking plenty of liquids, flossing, or taking prescribed medications.

Acting Well Coaching Program

(Proposed Website Copy) Maybe what you need is a live coach to lose weight. Lets face it, 95% of all people who try to lose a pound a week or 217

more gain most of it back. Why suffer all that effort and discomfort again and again? Use our coaching program. Instead of failing most of the time, our program succeeds almost all of the time. Its not a buddy or a pep-talk program; its a sensible, allinclusive system, successfully tested over many years, based on science, and supervised by doctors. We think youll love the program because it helps you lose weight painlessly while doing your favorite activities and eating your favorite foods. If youre obese, or simply overweight, you need to change some of your habits before you try to change your physique. Otherwise, you may lose one or two pounds a week, but youll gain all of it back. No other prognosis is possible! We can work with you on a highly personal level to talk you through the behavioral changes you need to make. Well send you special materials for each week. Well customize our program to meet your specific needs. Well give you detailed advice on what to eat, how much to serve, where to buy it most inexpensivelyeven how to deal with family situations that affect your eating habits. Food is central to your life now, and its central to our program. Therefore, we dont just make suggestions. We give you a choice of recipes matched to your preferences. We tell you how to find the right ingredients in your neighborhood. Even if youre an excellent cook, we can adjust your techniques so that you prepare and combine the best foods for you, in minimal time and precise quantities, to make sure you continuously lose weight. What we do for you with food we also do with fitness, motivation, cravings, addictions, and stress reduction. For example, well find the right exercise plan for you, customized to your age, preferences, general health, and extent of your weight problem. Well alter your program as you alter your weight, and well limit you to a single fitness exercise thats balanced to your diet in such a way that youre guaranteed to lose weight continuously until you meet your goal. If youre severely obese, after youve lost at least nine pounds on our program, we (and your physician) will guide you through a series of periodic, drug-assisted, crash diets. Over one to two years, you could lose as much as 100 pounds. Most importantly, you wont gain back the weight, ever! One or two years may seem like a long time to lose weight; but its the behavioral habits that take so long to change, not the limiting of calories or the metabolizing of fat cells. Click here to learn about the cost.... December 2000

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Moderation
The Greeks were famous for counseling moderation; but they werent necessarily temperate themselves. For example, Dionysus, in a Greek comedy by Eubulus, dedicates the first cup of wine to health. The second he dedicates to love and pleasure. The third is for sleep. Therein are the three portions of wine for the temperate. From thereon, its downhill. The fourth cup he assigns to hubris, the fifth to uproar, the sixth to drunken revels, the seventh to black eyes, the eighth to the police, the ninth to vomiting, and the tenth to throwing the furniture. Most people would define moderation as meaning Do a little bit of something youll enjoy every day; but dont do too much on any particular day. Thus, according to many doctors, people should drink one to two drinks (depending on their body mass) every day. Red wine is good for the heart, they say. However, people should avoid getting drunk. The fact that drinking may help lower the incidence of heart disease may be of general interest to epidemiologists; but for the average person, its an irrelevant excuse for drinking too much. There are many more sensible ways to avoid heart disease than getting high on two glasses of wine every night! Moderation should really mean the opposite of a little all the time, but a lot never. We may learn, for example, that alcohol hurts people in ways not now recognized. (Its been suggested, for example, that alcohol kills brain cells. How many, and under what circumstances, however, isnt clear.) If you drink enough alcohol to get high once in a while (for example, once a week), it probably wont hurt you at all. However, if you get high every nighteven if you dont get really drunkit may hurt youa lot! Therefore, you should define moderation as a lot once in a while is okay, but a little all the time isnt. This guideline applies to many human activities, from sex to various kinds of food, such as eggs, meat, and rich desserts. Even fitness exercises should be practiced with moderation, meaning a halfhour a day, no more. If you practice regular exercises too long, you negate the value of exercise-induced testosterone, thus lowering your psychological reward levels instead of elevating them. This problem can quickly lead to your abandoning your regular efforts to stay fit. Theres a joke about a sexologist asking a lecture audience for a show of hands about the frequency of their marital activities. One man raised his hand so eagerly he almost fell out of his chair. The lecturer turned to him and said, And how frequently do you have sex with your wife, sir? Once a year, came back the reply. Tonights the night!

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Compliance Rules
DIET Every week you must take complete and total responsibility for purchasing, preparing, and controlling portion sizes (determined solely through experimentation on your own body) for a total of 20 out of 21 of your own meals. No diets, no diet books, no dieticians, no snacks, no special health foods or food supplements, no daily variety, no reward foods, no family style servings, no weight loss to exceed two pounds per month. You may take vitamins as insurance if it makes you feel better. Others may cook for you if and only if they comply with these rules. Once a week, be sure to indulge in a family dinner or feast where no rules or habits apply. EXERCISE Every day you must do 30 minutes (not much more or less) of fitness exercises consisting of short periods of moderate aerobic activity alternating with intense aerobic activity (that is, touching but not pushing the envelope; for example, bicycling or in-line skating as fast as you can go without getting out of breath up hills and coasting down hills). There should be no competitive racing (which can interfere with regular elevated testosterone production), no goals (which can destroy motivation), no recreational sports (which have nothing to do with health and should be saved for weekends or other free or family time), no cosmetic exercises (such as weight-lifting, which has no place in a fitness regimen), no regular socializing (which can waste too much time for continual daily practice), no mechanical pulse monitoring (except, possibly, for the first few weeks if directed by a physician), no professionalism (such as doing stretching exercises that can extend a daily exercise period too long for an average persons schedule), no carrying or drinking from water bottles en route (theyre pretentious for half-hour routines), no expensive costumes (which can become unsanitary when used daily), and no dependencies on expensive personal trainers or fitness gurus (they can never be lifelong). STRESS REDUCTION Every morning, first thing, you must do 30-60 minutes of at least eight alternating periods of directed contemplation and graphic expression (such as taking notes, journal writing, typing, and/or drawing). No diaries, and no religious praying or other spiritual practices such as yoga, which may be done at other times during the day for spiritual, never for health, purposes. WORLD WALK Every day you must take a walk, preferably around sunset, to 220

rejoin the community. SMOKING CESSATION Thou shalt not smoke! LOVE You know what to do. (Not really a compliance rule, but eternally important.) LOG Keeping a log of your daily activities (until around 6 p.m.), from which you can calculate your weekly compliance, will help you maintain at least an 85% ratio. Dont try to do better. Enjoy being human.

FAQ: Approved Food List

Can you give me a list of approved foods I can eat? _______________________________________________________ What They say:

No problem-o! You may eat milk, yogurt, cheese, meat, poultry, fish, dry beans, eggs, nuts, raw leafy vegetables, other cooked or chopped raw vegetables, vegetable juice, apples, bananas, oranges, chopped fruit, cooked fruit, canned fruit, fruit juice, bread, ready-to-eat cereal, cooked cereal, rice, and pasta. (See the Food Pyramid to learn how much of each food we recommend.) In other words, youre not likely to see any foods you really love (such as desserts!) on a recommended list of food.

Therefore, resign yourself to eating healthy but uninteresting food for the rest of your life! _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: If you find the above list unappetizing, its because the list doesnt give you a clue as to how any of the foods are prepared. The way these lists are presented assumes that everyones a terrible cook, which just about everyone is the first time few times they cook something new. (Even professional chefs have to practice!) But you can make almost any of the above foods into, or add them to, world-class, appetizing dishes if you make the decision to get really good at cooking a particular meal in a particular way, and practice making the same dish week after week. (You can use 221

large pots to make enough to last a few weeks, for example, and freeze portions for day to day use.) You can even get better at cooking oatmeal in the morning, if you do it often enough! In other words, publishing a recommended list of foods is both meaningless and useless. You already know whats good for you and what isnt so good. You know, for example, that vegetables are better than candy, and fruit is better than lard. Nobody has to spell it out! Therefore, in constructing your menu, depend on yourself to figure out a daily perfect three-meal menu thats nutritionally sound and that offers enough variety throughout the day so that youll never get bored or hungry again. Others do it. So can you! _______________________________________________________ More on the subject:

Discovering a special sauce to put over a less appetizing food can make the difference between a food you wouldnt want to eat all the time and one you learn to love and look forward to eating every day. Processed diet dinners, like Lean Cuisine or Weight Watchers frozen foods, are ideal. Theyre nutritionally sound, night after night, and offer a variety of entrees. However, you may find that youre able to heat up a better (and significantly less expensive!) precooked meal yourself, and do so well at it that you dont miss the variety at all!

Assume the Position

The solemn moment that comes when you sit down, alone, at your special desk, and start to do Morning Preparation should (and will!) become the most precious, shocking, intense, and interesting moment of your day asfor the first time since you wokeyou grasp the moment of coming fully to life. (The earlier you start the better; so that your aliveness can spill out to sweeten the rest of the day.) Assume the position! is what police shout at an alleged male perp when they shove him against a wall, spread-eagle his legs, and brace his arms and hands against the wall in such a way that if he tries to run hell fall. Sometimes this practice, extended a bit farther, is called rousting. You can think of yourself as needing to roust yourself every morning. Your position when you do Morning Preparation wont be that stressful; but it will be as distinctive. Youll think of sitting down and preparing to do Morning Preparation as assuming the position 222

simply because that phrase is exactly how it feels. Youve probably heard the following drill: Sit up! Back straight! Feet flat on the floor! Chin tucked in! and so forth. Forget it! Doing Morning Preparation isnt typing, and you cant get carpal tunnel syndrome from doing it. When you achieve the right position, your body will let you know and you wont have to worry about it. You may change positions slightly from day to day and minute to minute depending on many factors. However, your body and brain will eventually find their ideal home position, which youll fall into whenever you return to your first main task of the day. Morning Preparation is like filling a grocery bag with groceries: the form of the bag shapes itself to what goes in the bag, not the other way around. In other words, never go for results. Doing Morning Preparation is a kind of chicken and egg or bootstrap operation. In other words, before you achieve B you must accomplish A. But A relies on your doing C correctly, so where do you begin? The answer is, like the chicken, simply get started, and dont worry about it. One clue we can share: If youre right-handed, youll probably do well to cup your right hand over your left with your elbows resting on the table or desk. If you cuddle one hand with the other, one day you may realize that youre expressing affection for yourself. Being conscious at that moment will make you like yourself better. However, dont think of these kinds of affectionate moments as techniques to raise self-esteem. That intention would be going for results.

FAQ: Should Calories Out Equal Calories In?

What They say: A loss of one to two pounds per week while dieting is considered healthy. To lose that pound of fat, in one week you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you take in, or consume 3,500 fewer calories than you need. In other words, if you eat 500 fewer calories than you need each day, or you exercise to burn 500 calories each day, youll lose about a pound per week. Therefore, dieting is a simple matter of figuring out how to take in fewer calories than you burn. If you can add and subtract, you can lose weight easily!

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_______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: First, theres no way you can calculate a relationship between physical activity and how many calories you burn. Too many other factors profoundly affect the results (the main one being: when do you measure your metabolic rate? During the first minute of exercise, when the result may be zero, or the 30th when it may be highest, or the 60th, when it may fall back again?). The same problem applies to measuring how many calories there are in a portion of almost any kind food. Averaging or rounding off can lead to wild errors. Second, although many experts regard the loss of one or two pounds a week healthy, such a rapid weight loss is four to eight times faster than you can go without carrying you headlong into yoyo dieting. Unconscious processes sense that somethings wrong in a body not used to sudden weight loss, and they may release chemicals (that is, certain neurotransmitters) to repair the damage. These chemicals can make you ravenous and devastate your diet. In other words, dieting isnt simple! If you want to take off weight, you have to fool your unconscious into thinking that everything is fine, which you can do when your weight loss is so gradual that your body wont get alarmed. Therefore:

The only way to skew a balance between intake of fuel and expenditure of energy in order to lose weight is to (a) regularize a three-meal daily menu, knowing exactly what youre going to eat and how much of each food; (b) regularize a fitness exercise; and (c) measure the results weekly or every other week and adjust accordingly. That means, if youve lost too much weight too quickly you may actually need to eat more portions of food the following week. Think of your obese body as a pit bull that gets excited when the doorbell rings. Tiptoe around when making unexpected moves. Be prepared to go slow. Pet often.

Panic Attacks
A panic attack is a reverberation of anxiety. That is, the more you feel it, the more it echoes, reverberates, and gets strongeruntil you become afraid of the fear itself. The fear strengthens as it feeds on itself until it reaches an unbearable level that makes you feel disconnected from yourself, as if youre going crazy (youre not!), or as if youre looking at the world through a long tunnel. 224

This experience is quite common, especially among teenagers and young adults. If, when dredging up anxiety from your unconscious, this experience happens to you, do the following: Consider your diet. If you eat too much sugar, the insulin it leaves behind after it metabolizes may contribute the physiological component of a panic trigger. (Thats one reason not to drink orange juice in the morning!) Realize that it is always the case that there is a psychological component to a panic attack: You did something good and positive for yourself that threatened your sense of who you are. The fear it caused your sense of character stability (not necessarily a healthy state!) can contribute the psychological component of a panic trigger. If panic grips you, immediately try to figure out what it was that you did for yourself that was positive and good. Go through every action you may have performed as carefully as you can until you hit the exact one that caused the problem. When you find the precise action-trigger, youll know you have found it because the panicky feelings you havethose very feelings will convert into an equally strong feeling of joy. The sensation is so dramatic that youll have no doubt about having found the very action that propelled the fear. Youll experience the joy as the same feeling that you felt when you were panicked; but instead of running through the aversion center of your brain (the pain center) it will run through the pleasure center. As strong as the anxiety was, that strong will be the joy! The next time you experience a panic attack, your aversion to it will be less than it was before. Immediately go to work to find out the cause. Youll find it, and the anxiety will convert to joybut it will be less joyful than before because it will match the diminished level of the new anxiety. You may have two or three subsequent episodes, each of them diminished, then nothing for the rest of your life. If you take pills to prevent panic attacks, you cannot use this natural method to end them. Use this information to help you convert anxiety into joy during Steps & Landings.

Variety
For hundreds of thousands of years, human beings ate virtually the same meals every day. Only recently did the rise of market economies create such a plethora of choices that the average supermarket may stock more than 30,000 items at a time. Behind each choice is a competitive business pushing its wares, creating an unwieldy cornucopia of choices and an unprecedented situation in the modern world. Despite this engorgement of food, the public is continually being 225

frightened into thinking that leaving out an essential nutrient may prove fatal. Why take chances? is the best advice. Try everything! Thus, almost all mothers try to offer their families a variety of foods, to make sure no one gets bored and no nutrients are missed; and supermarkets become more like restaurants tempting peoples appetites than resources for stocking private kitchens. Those who try everything tend to go overboard. Most people resist entreaties to change and experiment. Nevertheless, almost everyone succumbs occasionally to one opportunity or another to sample some new thing. Trying to cover all bases creates a peculiarly American disease because America is able to offer such a variety. The disease reflects an excess of personal freedom that encourages the self-gratification of cravings to the point of obesity. Anyone should be able to make and sell anything that does no harm. However, harm may come from variety itself when one is continually encouraged to test and choose new things. Thus, peoples lives become filled with irresistible desires for ever-new gratifications in travel, foods, fads, ideas, friends, and lovers. What started out as variety becomes a taste for novelty. The result is a kind of obesity of both the body and the brain. The problem doesnt arise because one consumes too many different things. For example, most people suffering from this disease usually crave the same rich snacks and desserts time after time. The disease arises because ones sense of self-control is abandoned. Variety itself is tempting because accompanying it is permission to abandon all rules and limitations. Variety, disguised as novelty, always sets up a temporary trial system: Lets try out this new thing. Rules are suspended during trial periods, and that suspension of self-disciplinary rules is a major appeal that helps to mislead people into thinking, variety is good for your health. Thus, variety and novelty yield multiple reward systems: One reward is the excitement of sampling new things themselves. The other reward is permission to abandon ordinary rules of moderation. This double reward system is considered good for the economy (which it obviously is). However, the system is ruining the general health of American families.

Hunger and boredom

Hunger and boredom are two giveaway words that denote bullshit. The minute someone says, I get bored exercising regularly, you know theyre bullshitting themselves. The minute someone says, I get too hungry in the afternoons to stop myself from bingeing, you know theyre bullshitting you. As to boredom: People get bored because they dont exercise regularly, not because they do. They create two habits: one for days they exercise and one for days they dont. Which habit do you think 226

wins out in the end? As to hunger: When people exercise regularly and properly, they only have to eat enough not to get hungry. In that case, they eventually will never get hungry and will never gain weight. However, when people dont exercise, the same amount of food they need in order not to get hungry will be slightly more than they should eat in order to maintain their ideal weight. That slight difference can accumulate into a pound or more per year. Therefore, these people gain weight. They may blame their problem on hunger, but their diagnosis is bullshit. If someone exercises most days of the week (or any variation thereof), they may not gain weight on days they exerciseeven if they eat to avoid hunger. However, these people will probably gain weight (even if its only a fraction of an ounce) on the off days when they dont exercise. They may respond to the same hunger; but on their off days, it will cause them to gain. Over a years time, even if the net gain is only a pound a year, in 20 years, the net gain will be 20 pounds. 20 years go by quickly. (Ask anyone whos more than 40 years old!) These calculations demonstrate the overwhelming reason why medical advice to exercise most days of the week is lethal: it creates boredom in the exerciser and it causes the exerciser to gain weight overall. Therefore, it isnt just the practitioners of this bad advice who are bullshitting themselves, its the medical profession that authenticates the bullshit in the first place. If you ask doctors why they do it (and Ive asked several!), theyll explain that their patients wont tolerate an every day prescription for exercise. It seems to me that this pandering to patients is a form of institutional malpractice, for it leads many people to an early death. These people wind up doing no exercise at all; and they suffer the extreme consequences of heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and/or certain forms of cancer, and so on. Lets end the bullshit!

Frequent Meals
Some nutritionists warn against eating three meals a day. Instead, they recommend small meals (or feedings) no more than four hours apart. Their schedule turns out to be: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a couple of nutritious snacks throughout the day. The two reasons for this advice are (1) when you eat small meals you wont get too full, and (2) you wont feel fatigued from eating excess calories that put you on a blood-sugar roller coaster. In other words, feedings arent about nutrition at all; theyre about feelings (of fullness and fatigue). 227

Arent there more rational ways to avoid those feelings? For example, what if you dont stuff yourself at any meal? What if you just eat normal amounts of food at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and just say no to the excess calories that run blood sugar up and down? Snacks are related to the canard about frequent small meals. Theyre considered especially healthy when theyre tasteless, watery, and full of chewy fiber. Thus, leaving celery sticks around the kitchen is considered appropriate for children. Supposedly, the little darlings will be tempted to munch on these warm, green tidbits, thus avoiding candy bars and other tempting treats beyond a shouting distance from nutrition. Of course, the truth is that anyone who indulges in snacking has less interest in an apricot than in a stolen scoop of ice cream at four in the morning. Stealth is part of the pleasure. Make no mistake about it: snacking is about rewards and pleasure. The practice releases dopamine. In that sense, it can be addictive. Arent those more sensible alternatives to dividing your daily intake into five or more sections, thereby risking the temptation to consume extra calories? Almost nobody overeats at breakfast or lunch. The problems of being overweight usually begin and end at dinnertime. Therefore, if you move some of the foods you normally eat for dinner to an earlier meal in the day, you can solve the fullness problem. In fact, if you calculate exactly what you need to eat each day in order to maintain a constant weight; and if you divide that days menu into breakfast, lunch, and dinner; you will (1) never get too full again; and (2), if your blood sugars causing problems, those problems will end permanently. Some nutritionists figure otherwise about blood sugar; but not a single scientific study supports their view. People who eat well and exercise regularly have no problems with blood sugareven people like me, who have an extensive history of diabetes in the family.

Alcoholics Anonymous
In 1934, after three failures in a Manhattan hospital to stop drinking, Bill Wilson was alone in his room when he shouted, If there is a God, let him show himself now! According to legend, Wilsons room filled with light. He saw himself standing atop a mountain, with wind blowing toward him, then through him. He immediately recognized the change in his character; and from that day until he died 36 years later, Bill W. never drank alcohol again. He went on to found Alcoholics Anonymous as a broad-based, democratic fellowship available to anyone with a drinking problem. Note the following points in Bill Wilsons story: 228

His epiphany created a new character for himself: a person who didnt drink. He saw himself that way, and his vision never wavered for the rest of his life. Wilsons epiphany came in response to the recognition (or belief in) a force larger than himself. The recognition of such a force is an essential part of the 12-step program on which AA is based. (However, even today, AA discourages any specific religious interpretation of this larger forceso as not to disqualify atheists from its program, for example). Wilson sought to share his technique for changing ones character through a system of dramatic confrontations with others who share the same problem rather than medically or educationally. Thus, typical AA meetings are not like lecture halls where puppetmaster-teachers enlighten (and test) students; theyre more like Quaker meetings in which cocongregationalists are free to share their spiritual life. When members of AA stand up and speak before their peers, they are performing (actually, theyre acting well!). Wilson didnt use his profound experience to profit himself. He didnt become a guru or a disciple of God or anyone else to make a living. Today, AA continues as a lateral (as opposed to a hierarchical) institution.

The sense of community has always been strong in AA. Although the AA community refers mainly to alcoholics, it knows its destiny depends on the larger world beyond. Acting Well seeks to create a similar sense of community; therefore, its techniques include a daily outreach through various means. Like acting, it seeks to stimulate a non-scientific belief system (for example, in the forces that establish ones character) that is effective even though it isnt true. (That is, an actors work involves fiction, not science.) Acting Well seeks to be lateral, not hierarchical. Finally, it seeks to pertain to the community beyond its adherents and to be international in scope.

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How Babies Learn

On the bus, today, I watched a small baby (only a few months old) sitting on its mothers lap, trying to make order of the world. I tried to catch its eye, and I did; but I could tell that I was no more important to this baby than whatever lay outside the window behind me. The baby flashed a tentative smile at what lay outside one or another of the windows from time to time; and perhaps I even saw a flicker of a smile when my image passed briefly through its new, growing, and activated store of images. I could tell that much more was going on in the babys head than met the eye. I could clearly see how the babys brain was involved in a full-time job trying to figure out what was going on. Was anything it saw familiar (I suppose it asked itself)? Did the baby recognize anything that it now saw? Or did it have to make new sense of new information imposing itself on its new set of eyes, forcing it to connect old neural column combinations (which might have been hooked up only yesterday!) with new ones in order to prepare its brain for tomorrow? I could tell how much work the babys brain would have to do while in the daily and nightly process of implanting new columns and combinations during this critical period of its brains growth. When I suddenly realized how its (not so) tiny brain was probably being flooded nightly with permanent new columns eager to hook up, I also understood why babies sleep so much of the time. (Being constantly bombarded throughout their waking days by, what to them, is new information, they obviously would run out of their constant supply of available new columns more quickly than my adult brain would!) The whole process opened before me! Whereas, before I stumbled onto these new theories, I would have imagined that not much of anything goes on inside a childs brain (no matter what my eyes would tell mefor all would have seemed like a clouded period of childish confusion to me!); now, I could tell how intense the concentration was that I was witnessing. The baby looked like it was learning as much, if not more, than a college student who attends a lecture! The baby was Acting Well! I could actually see how things were fitting together in its head; and the sight of it all was beautiful and inspiring to watch!

Scripts and Logs

Just spoke to R about his keeping track of what he does in the log and its importance to Acting Well.

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I said I thought that task was the equivalent of an actor adhering to a script. Its possible that an arrogant (or poorly trained) actor would say, I dont have to follow the script exactly! I know the story, more or less. Therefore, if I go onstage, I can just wing it and itll come out more or less as it should. What would a playwright say to that remark (before firing the actor!)? Obviously, in life, theres no playwright (unless you consider your playwright an aspect of your persona that drifts in and out). Nevertheless, its essential to keep accurate records of what happens during an Acting Well dayfor the same reason that a stage actor has to adhere to a script. What may seem confusing is that a script tells you what youre supposed to do (in the future), and a log tells you (or others) what you just did (in the past). The difference between them seems to be one of differing relationships to time, whether to the future or to the past. In fact, both script and log are about the present. That is, when you adhere to a script, its in the present; and when you record something in the log, you also are recording it in the present. Whatever value there is in adhering to, or recording in, a script or a log, that value occurs in the presentnot the past (certainly!) nor in the future. Its right now. In other words, what you just did, or what youre supposed to do, makes no difference in the life youre living thats occurring right now. Therein is the connection between a script and a log. Theyre both instruments of the now; and theyre both importantand for the same reason. Your now is the same now whether youre reciting the words of a script or recording an action just completed. Only in the now can you change your life. Thus, only by Acting Well can you be assured of living your life in the eternal presentas much as its possible for a person to do from moment to moment. Of course, 90% of the time you wont be conscious of the eternal present; but if you only raise your level of consciousness to 10% of the time from 1% of the time, youll be doing a lot!

Making Time for Morning Preparation

As much as an hour? A whole hour out of my life to do Morning Preparation? I dont have any spare hours! I have to make a living, I have to sleep a reasonable amount of time; and then theres my familyor my friendsor my lover(s)or my hobbiesor my television.... An hour? From where? The answer is: Steal! However, you have to be a good thief, a reasonable thief, and a generous thief. You also have to be ruthless about taking time that 231

can be yours only if you claim it. For this kind of theft, the loot can be magnificent! (And you never are punished.) But what if my mate gives me flak? you ask. First, arrange with your sleeping partner to have the bedroom to yourself exclusively for an hour a day. (Virginia Woolfs advice on creativity said it most succinctly: A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.) Use a small desk thats yours exclusively for doing Morning Preparation. Keep it clear at all times, and dont let anyone else use it. (If you use a bedroom for this purpose, always make the bed, and keep the room neat and office-like while doing Morning Preparation.) Make sure youre stealing the time from yourself, not your mate (for example, your children demand, need, and deserve plenty of time, too). Ask yourself, and whoever else is concerned, if its unreasonable to ask for (and to give, if the tables turn and they ask you) an hour of privacy each day. If you ask your mates how much of your time they expect from you each day, youll probably be disappointed to find out that its much less than you thought! If you were ill and had to have medical treatments every day, no one would complain about the time it took. Thus, consider Morning Preparation as a preventive medical treatment to ward off illnesses and other evils. Another strategy is to demand that whoever complains about your need for isolation practice what you practice at the same time you dobut in a different room. In general, if you dont live alone youll find it much easier to do Morning Preparation if your mate does it as well. Joining you is the best form of supportiveness for such goals as losing weight, being more creative, and so forth.

FAQ: Portion Sizes

How much pasta (or anything else) should I spoon out every night? _______________________________________________________ What They say:

The specifications on a typical box of pasta are: NET WT. 16 OZ. (1 LB). Serving Size 1 cup (2 OZ.). 8 servings per Container. 200 Calories per serving. The New York Times main course pasta recipes recommend that you prepare enough for three servings per person. In other words, the pasta company recommends that each serving should be no more than two ounces (which yield 200 calo232

ries). The New York Times recommends that each serving should be 5.3 ounces (which yield 533 calories).

Therefore, if you eat triple portion sizes of pasta every night, you will eat 23.3 more ounces of pasta per week than if you eat a normal serving size. Thats 2,333 additional calories per week! _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: If youre losing or maintaining weight, you should control the amounts in your recipes with great precision (weighing them on a cooking scale, for example) and never allow yourself to partake of more generous portion sizes. If you eat the same pasta dish every night according to recipes in The New York Times, you will be eating an additional 76 pounds of food per year (not counting the extra sauce youd spoon over the pasta!), which will not only make losing weight impossible, but avoiding gaining weight highly unlikely. In other words, never serve yourself (or anyone else!) family style. Always calculate recipe amounts precisely, even if you have to alter recipes to do so (by experimenting with the right quantities until you get the food to taste exactly rightwhich is a good reason to settle on only a few choices of dinner entrees for yourself and your guests). Therefore, always control portion sizes according to a food manufacturers instructions (assuming theyre honest!), not to recipes that encourage you to serve generous portion sizes family style. Unless you have real pigs as friends, most of your guests wont know the difference. Assume that people expect to eat exactly whats put on their plate. (Thats what most parents, unfortunately, teach their children!) If you spoon out more, or offer seconds, most of your guests will think its rude not to eat everything, even if theyre full. To anticipate that your guests will act like pigs, or to expect them to behave so, displays extreme bad manners on your part, not theirs.

Sensible Care
There are several ways to care for the human mind and body:

Formative care is the parental care and education we give to children who havent quite mastered the tasks of caring for themselves. Critical care is life-and-death therapeutic care we need when, for example, were poisoned or injured and cant care for ourselves or havent the experience to know what to do.

Both formative and critical care presumably involve experts: 233

usually doctors or parents.

Operational care is the conscious attention we pay to the details of our life; for example, our eating, sleeping, and cleanliness habits. Sensible care is operational care attuned to the intuitive (or unconscious) needs of our body.

The theory of sensible care is that the body knows best how to ensure its survival. Its intuitive knowledge, which is locked in the unconscious, can be retrieved through various means, such as trial and error, paying close attention to how one feels, keeping track of regular habits, keeping a log, being as practical and scientific as possible, and using common sense. Sensible care both requires and provides motivation. Motivation (or willpower) ought to be a simple matter since it costs nothing and everyone wants to stay healthy. A major threat to motivation, however, comes from commercial sources, such as doctors, insurance companies, authors, educators, and sellers of medical and pseudoscientific products. These experts use high-powered sales techniques to seduce consumers away from sensible care to marketable forms of critical caresuch as quick weight-loss programs, exercise machines, and stress reduction training. These products and services (called health maintenance, preventive medicine, wellness, or lifestyle modification) are pernicious when they appeal to peoples indolence and vanity, promising obese people, for example, magic methods to gorge and grow thin. Nature didnt evolve human creatures that had to know about vitamins, daily exercises, or meditation techniques. All the information we need to survive is contained in our bodies. When our brains become sensitive to our bodies, that information (which is in the unconscious) can motivate healthy behavior. However, when commercial interests intervene with pills, diets, exercise machinery, and yoga courses, motivation is displaced, leaving people confused, frustrated, fearful, and riddled with guilt. A return to the sensible care our ancient ancestors practiced is the best advice for people who want to continue to enjoy good health. December 1997

FAQ: How long will it take to lose ten pounds?

What They say:

You can expect to lose from one to two pounds per week on any 234

approved diet. If you try to take off more than that, youll become overwhelmingly hungry and put the weight back on.

In other words, when you lose too much weight too quickly, your body (that is, your unconscious) senses thats somethings wrong, and it affects your metabolism so that youre likely to become ravenously hungry until youve gained back whatever you lost.

Therefore, there are no health issues to be concerned about if you take off one to two pounds per week. It should therefore take you five to ten weeks to lose ten pounds. _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: The fact is that 90% of the time, if you take off more than an average of four or five ounces per week, youll gain back the weight no matter what else you do. The problem is that the unconscious system that provokes ravenous hunger doesnt just kick in if you lose more than one or two pounds per week; it can kick in if you lose more than a one to two pounds a month! By losing weight slowly, on the other hand, you can trick your unconscious (which is far more clever than you are!) into thinking that nothing is wrong. It wont make you hungry, and youll lose weight slowly, but methodically. In other words, Losing a pound or two a week is much too rapid a weight loss, by a factor of two to four times too fast. However, if youre content to lose one-half of a pound a week, then you can lose 24 pounds in a year, 48 pounds in two years, and 72 pounds in three years by Acting Well. (It may be possible, although the idea hasnt been tested, for someone who has been on the Acting Well program for six months to a year, or long enough to have programmed the subconscious effectively, to go on a starvation dietin order lose more massive amounts of weight quicklywithout gaining back the weight.) Therefore, you can lose ten pounds in about five months if youre willing to be reasonable. However, more importantly, for the rest of your life, youll never have to gain back those ten pounds! May 2000

The Acting Well Telephone Consulting Program

(Proposed Advertising Copy) What to Expect:

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We divide the Acting Well program into two periods: a Rehearsal Period that lasts approximately six months, followed by a Performance Period that lasts indefinitely. We dont pay much attention to what you eat. (Caring mainly about the quantity or quality of food while losing weight is like an actor merely memorizing words instead of recreating believable actions.) We dont care what you do for exercise as long as its consistent, simple, enjoyable, gets you almost (but not quite) winded, and takes no more than a half-hour per day. By the end of the six-month Rehearsal Period:

Youll realize that youve committed yourself to staying on the Program for the rest of your life. Youll lose one-and-a-half to two pounds per month while eating normal amounts of food. Your bodys muscles will become sufficiently coordinated to be able to generate higher levels of serotonin (which is the brains fulfillment hormone) and testosterone (which is the bodys equivalent to serotonin) during your half-hour daily exercise. The additional serotonin will shift your cravings for food (that is, for fulfillment) to cravings for exercise. If youre still obese, and want to lose weight quickly at that point, youll be ready to embark on a series of temporarily accelerated starvation diets to lose more substantial amounts of weight permanently. Youll have learned enough to be able to continue receiving lifelong benefits from Acting Well without renewing your membership in our program.

Dont expect your cravings for food, bingeing, weakened willpower, etc., to disappear entirely before the end of the sixth month, which is concurrent with the serotonin shift. So far, every person who has gone on the Acting Well program has experienced the same benefits on the same timetable, has lost weight and kept it off, and has permanently committed to remain on the program. What You Get: Weekly telephone sessions (30-45 minutes) for the first month, and as needed thereafter. Weekly logs to fill out, parts of which you mail back. 236

Printed literature with instructions. A videotape (The Magic Bullet) about the program. Unlimited E-mail access. Website support membership. Monthly Cost: First month: $300, non-refundable; months 2-12: $100; subsequent months: $50. Annual Cost: First year: $1,200, up to $600 refundable. Subsequent years: $500. November 2000

Comparing Calories In with Calories Out

You often hear that the best way to maintain your weight is to make sure that the number of calories you take in when you eat matches the number of calories you burn when you exercise. Theoretically, those numbers should be equal in order to maintain your ideal weight. However, how can anyone observe this rule? For example, if you regularly consume the calories in just one more ounce of dinner entre than you balance with exercise, in a single year youll have taken in an extra 23 pounds of food you didnt needand all the calories in those pounds. How many push-ups do you have to do to metabolize 23 pounds? The answer is that there simply is no meaningful correlation between weight gain or loss and number of calories in a portion of ingested food eaten on a particular day tallied against the number of calories metabolized by exercise on that same day. In other words, nobody can help you with these calculations. The results will never be meaningful. The problem isnt just comparing apples and oranges; its more like trying to mix cement while mashing potatoes. A similar example of this kind of lapsed logic would be to claim that a plausible method to measure the distance between two cities would be to calculate the amount of fuel burned by traveling between them. To be sure, you burn fuel when you travel. However, you cant predict how much gasoline someone will need for a particular trip without knowing whether the traveler will be riding in an SUV or a Volkswagen; whether the vehicle uses diesel or high octane fuel; and whether the trip involves going 30 mph in stop-go traffic, or 80 mph on a freeway. Not only can these variables make huge differences, but also cer237

tain factors may vary from day to day and trip to trip, making inaccurate calculations even more meaningless. In other words, if you want to calculate distance accurately, watch the odometer, not the gas gauge. As for how much fuel you need on a particular day: if you know where youre going, and you watch the gas gauge, you can easily calculate when you have to stop at a gas station. Thats all you can know; and its all you need to know.

FAQ: About Changing Lifestyles

My doctor says I have to change my lifestyle. What does that mean? _______________________________________________________ What They say: Your physician may believe that your stress levels are too high (which may mean you should change jobsbetter a happy pauper than an affluent corpse!). You may need to stop trying to live on the edge, and start following the simple rules of good health. Heres what your doctor may want you to do to change your lifestyle:

Stop smoking entirely, and cut drinking to a minimum. Walk to work and leave your car home. Stop taking elevators. Always climb the stairs (taking two at a time gets you up there faster!). Get no less than eight hours sleep per night. Stop watching so much television with your family. Play ball more often with your kid. Shovel snow or rake leaves every chance you get. Join a health club. Stop enjoying your food. Starve yourself until your body-mass index goes below 25. Then proceed with extreme caution. Only go to holistic doctors. Only eat organic health foods. Take every supplement you can stand to swallow. (You never know!) You want to live well? Thats how! 238

_______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: What you have to do while Acting Well (specifically, keeping a log, eating three meals a day instead of five, practicing a fitness exercise no more than 30 minutes a day, preparing yourself in the morning, and taking a brief walk in the afternoon) hardly constitutes an entire lifestyle change! If youve been living a sedentary lifestyle in the past, and your doctor tells you that youd better get off your butt, your daily 30minute exercise regimen will do the trick entirely. All the other miscellaneous activities (like shoveling snow) won't accomplish anything because theyre not regular. On the other hand, if you exercise every day, youll find that activities like raking leaves are easier and more fun. However, if all you do to prepare for shoveling snow is shoveling snow, youre more likely to die of a heart attack while shoveling snow than enjoying yourself! In other words, from the point of view of Acting Well, changing your lifestyle is not only impossible, its not desirable.

Acting Well Technique

When an actor playing MacBeth turns to his onstage wife to forswear committing regicide, he announces, We will proceed no further in this business. Lady MacBeth, appalled at his sudden loss of motivation, counters, But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and well not fail! In only seven exchanges with her husband, she wins the day. I am settled, says MacBeth, and bend up each corporal agent to this terrible feat. The actors motivation in changing his mind so quickly cannot be the same as MacBeths. Real life takes too long. The actor has to figure out how to do it quicker and more efficiently. Thus, he might conjure up the image of a hateful person by using an object he placed somewhere onstage before the curtain rose, and on which he begins to focus the moment Lady MacBeth mentions the words sticking-place. Suddenly, almost magically, his emotions shift, and he renews his former objective. The audience believes it. So does he, at that moment. The real MacBeth, on the other hand, would have go through a much more tortuous, non-verbal process entirely within his head. No doubt 95% of all men in MacBeths situation will abandon such a plot, if not within minutes, than in weeks. This example illustrates the difference between what most people think of as willpower in sticking to a diet, and Acting Wells motivational techniques. The common impression is that if you go on a diet, you must screw your courage to the sticking-place in order not to fail. 239

The actor who performs MacBeth, on the other hand, isnt so heroic. He may select an easy technique (called substitution in the above example) to give the impression that hes changed his mind and will now commit murder. Thus, whereas 95% of potential usurpers to a throne will abandon all thoughts of regicide almost instantly, 100% of actors performing the role of MacBeth, using Stanislavski technique, will succeed in convincing the audiences (and themselves) that they must kill the king! Likewise, 95% of all people determined to lose weight who are convinced they can and must screw their courage to the stickingpoint will fail; whereas 100% of people using Acting Well techniques are bound to succeed.

The Script
Wouldnt it be nice to have a script to follow every day! If you had a script with which to go through the day, youd automatically know what time to get up in the morning, what to eat for breakfast, how long to meditate or chant, and how many sit-ups to do. A script would even imply that you could find a director to watch and make sure you perform each task correctly. The problem is: have you ever seen grade school kids perform a play where they memorized every word and followed Teachers instructions perfectlyand you didnt believe a word of it? Children are wonderful actors when you watch them play by themselves. Their levels of belief in the pretend worlds they conjure up are amazing. Just dont try to write their script for them! Acting Well is like a childrens play scenario. You can find out exactly what to do (there are many healing disciplines that can tell you exactly what to do!); but the only way Acting Well works is when you write the script yourself, direct yourself, and perform and captivate the audience yourself. Its improvisation raised to the level of art. To practice Acting Well, you dont need to buy or borrow someone elses scriptyou might get the wrong guide for your situation. Being an imperfect human being, you dont fit anyone elses mold. Maybe you shouldnt sleep as long as the guy down the hall. Maybe you shouldnt eat as big a breakfast as the gal upstairs. Maybe your needs this year are altogether different from what they were twenty or thirty years agoor what they will be decades from now. Maybe theres some reason why you should roller skate and not play basketball. Who knows? Who cares? Youre unique. All the scientific tests in the world wont tell you as much about your needs as your body can tell you when it whispers its secrets. Thus, your body and your unconscious are the best writers, directors, and producers in the world; and the world is your audience. Its a pretty good oyster. Just watch and listen carefully so you that can 240

pick up the subtle clues that lead you to yourself.

Spinners
Mind is a spinner. Its independent of the brain; its whats spinning in the brain. You spin yourself into self-knowledge. Think of your mind as you would think of your country being independent of the soil. Your country is more than the soil. Your country is the laws of your country, its boundaries, and the feelings its citizens have about it. You cant touch, see, or scientifically demonstrate these spinners. Spinners are as ephemeral as the shrieking of a bird. They echo for a while and then are lost forever. They reverberate; thats how you recognize them. However, if you capture the sound of a whale you hear the moan of immortality. It becomes like the song of the land. It throbs with life and opens a road down which to travel. Its magical and god-infested. You plant it in a garden; its the seed. At the atomic level, everything spins. Heisenbergs contribution to quantum mechanics showed that you cant determine the position and momentum of a spinning electron simultaneously because the means you use to measure will change the one or the other. If an electron slowed and stopped, which is inconceivable, it would cease to exist. Thus, with thoughts, you cant slow them down, or they cease to exist. They cant exist without spin. Virtual Consciousness is a consciousness that doesnt exist in real reality. We only experience scattered flashes of it, like moments looking in the mirror and seeing your eyes; and yet we think consciousness is a constant state. That constant but non-existent state is Virtual Consciousness. Its assumed to be there, but it isnt there. The illusion of its being there (by virtue of the fact that it ought to be there) is precisely the illusory constancy of our lives. Without spin you couldnt understand these thoughts or possess this knowledge. Spinners include: ACTION, ART (that is, the idea of it, not the artifacts), ATTENTION, BEING, CARE, CONSCIOUSNESS, CREATIVITY, DISCOVERY, ECHO, EXISTENCE, FEELINGS (all feelings are spinners; anything felt is temporary), GOD, GRACE, HAPPINESS, HEALTH, HOPE, ILLUSION, INTENTION, LIFE, LOVE, MIND, MUSIC, NATION (or STATE), OBSERVATION, PASSION, POISE, QUALITY, REALITY, SCIENCE, SELF, SELF-AWARENESS, SOUL, SPIRIT, STARTLE, VALUE, and WORK.

Closure
Closure is a kind of happiness. Its a kind of permission, the right 241

of the walk, le droit du seigneur. Closure is variable: it varies from day to day, and it depends on unpredictable experiences. It also seems to depend on pleasure. Closure is a powerful tool for those who dont know where to begin Morning Preparation. Thats why it should be the first objective in Steps & Landings. For Closure is heroic walking. (It follows the same rhythm as walking.) It should take no more discipline to begin Morning Preparation with the first idea (which is to remember doing heroic walking) than it takes to Assume the Position. Closure is a form of affective memory that actors use. You get a certain click when you close on something. An actor probably feels the same thing when using mental tricks. Closure to a crowd scene is easiest. Thus, the memory you choose to close to is best formed in the presence of people. The principle of emerging is important to Closurecoming out of a building onto a crowded street, for example. Very often, the idea of exiting the residence where you live is the moment youll select next day for Closure. Closure is also an entering. Its like a actors characters entrance onto the stage (of life), which is why walkingor pretending to walkis so essential to Morning Preparation, even while youre only sitting in a chair. Movement makes it happen. Movement makes thoughts. Neuroscience has suggested the idea that there can be no real, extended thought without movement. The idea of body image is important to Closure. You can have more than one kind of body image. Some examples are:

A real image (in which you view yourself in photographs or sometimes in a mirror when the light is unflattering); An imagined image, whichif you wear glasses, and if your visage going into middle age has become more complicatedis what you seem to look like when you can see yourself in a mirror without wearing your glasses; and The image projected next day from a Closure to walking down a street dressed in a way you feel attractive.

The reality of what you look like isnt the important thing; its the preparation and reinforcement that counts. The silent eloquence of body language involves posture, costume, and attitude. In a crowd scene, you speak with body language. Thats the dialect of how to own the street. People like to go to stores or places that provide them with the 242

kind of attitude most useful for Closure. Clever marketers understand this preference and design their malls accordingly. It matters how you walk when youre in conducive surroundings. You should try to perform professionally, and to dress appropriately. Life is neither a fiction nor a dream to conjure up in the brains of an audience. Life is as real as it gets.

Correct Posture while doing Acting Well

Yoga recommends various sitting positions to overcome any possible kinks that develop when people dont sit straight. Likewise, chiropractors generally urge their patients not to interrupt a healthy flow of energy through the spine by risking subluxations caused by poor posture. It would be nice to think that a particular posture (say, a ramrodstiff spine) could make you more conscious, prevent and cure disease, and release psychic energies that will carry you all the way to Nirvana! The idea that posture affects the spirit lies behind the peculiar positions yoga recommends, such as the lotus position. However, there is no scientific or clinical evidence that any kind of physical, mystical, psychic, or spiritual energy exists, much less that it courses up and down your spine and can be affected by posture. Therefore, dont worry about how you sit. As far as posture is concerned, youll do much better doing stretching exercises as you get older to protect yourself against lower back pain. These prophylactic exercises may help prevent spasms that can fell people for weeks. However, they have no spiritual or psychic value. You dont have to sit in a lotus position to do Acting Well. In fact, you cant write when youre in the lotus position! Therefore, if youre going to practice Acting Well, youll have to think differently about posture. Its desirable, but not always necessary, to be comfortable when sitting at a desk while doing your Morning Preparation. However, you can do Acting Well in any sitting or lying position you like; and its an interesting experiment to try out different postures from time to time (for example, if you happen to be on vacation and have no place else to do your Morning Preparation except in a bed). Youll eventually find the posture that works best for you. In all likelihood, that posture will have you seated at a desk or table, feet flat on the floor, arms resting on the desk. Youll probably fall into this posture naturally.

FAQ: The Food Pyramid

Should I plan my menus around the Food Pyramid? _______________________________________________________ 243

What They say:

Every day you should eat 6-11 servings of bread, cereal, rice, or pasta; 2-4 servings of fruit; 2-3 servings of meat, poultry, fish, dry beans, eggs, or nuts; 3-5 servings of vegetables; 2-3 servings of milk, yogurt, or cheese; and use fats, oils, and sweets sparingly. In other words, you should eat between 15 and 26 servings drawn from 18 different kinds of food every day.

Therefore, if you follow the high end of only the grain group recommendations, you will eat the equivalent of more than one-half of a loaf of bread per day. And thats just from the grain group! _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: Its almost certain that if you tend to be overweight, and you follow the governments advice, even at the lowest end, youd get heavier and heavier until youre obese. In other words, whatever it was that the U.S. Department of Agriculture was smoking when they devised the pyramid scheme listed above is anybodys guess. That they struggled not to displease the American food industry is obvious. Therefore, you should ignore these ridiculous guidelines, as they are wildly unhealthy. They suggest so much variety that making different choices daily (which the government obviously wants to encourage) would be mandatory. Furthermore, suggesting servings is no way to help you figure out how much you should eat. You may want to eat a banana, an apple, and a handful of raisins every day to get your fruit. However, thats not 3 servings of fruit. (It may be five or six some days, depending on the size of the banana, the apple, or your hand.) A banana, an apple, and a handful of raisins is an easy concept to understand. Determining whether these three fruits are too much or too little for you is easily done if you eat them every day and measure what happens to your weight after a few weeks.

Biancas Summer Hampton Psychic Makeover Class

Wednesday, December 3, 1997 Ive been worried about the organization of all these articles probably more than 500 of them, and thousands of entries!but I see a natural way to do it. 244

Im also worried about the tone of the writing. It needs to be amusing and well written, and not too scientific or technical. But its gotten stodgy and too precise and not interesting! I need to include my co-author (Bianca Jagger), of course, but I havent been able quite to figure out how. Without knowing what to do about her, or what she wants me to do, or what to suggest to her, Ive been somewhat stymied. Now I see the way. I could have it be a diary! (Or a journal.) BEGIN: Ive spent fourteen months and traveled all the way to Russia twice preparing for this book! Finally, today, after many false starts, 300 pages of computer notes, a bulging printed file, hundreds of clippings, many books, detailed outlines, lengthy conversations with Bianca, and almost 500 separate subjects to write about, at last it struck me how to organize this stuff and make a go of it. Ill simply tell the story of how I got involved in cardiology and preventive medicine; how the principles I learned about caring for ones health led me to prepare this syllabus for Biancas Summer Hampton Psychic Makeover Classfor thats the startling breakthrough concept I came up with, a few hours ago, that finally broke the logjam of my uncertainty! Thursday, December 4, 1997 Need to figure out how to use this book as a syllabus. I forgot about that element. It has to be divided into days, as it were; topics to be discussed that lead one to another. Need to do this book as if it were my script for running a seminar or a course in how to do psychic makeovers. Dump the beginning. Dont need it! December 1997

FAQ: How Many Calories Should I Eat Every Day?

What They say: If you're a woman trying to lose weight, eat approximately 1,200-1,500 calories a day; men trying to lose weight should eat 1,500-1,800 calories a day. For proper nutrition, women should eat at least 1,200 calories daily; men should consume no less than 1,500 calories. In other words, to lose weight you have to reduce caloric levels drastically. But its still possibly to eat a nutritionally balanced diet even at starvation levels. All you have to do is figure out which foods you can eat (which, as you know, means which foods you cant eat!). 245

Therefore, if youre trying to lose weight, its not unhealthy to starve yourself for a while eating foods you dont like until youve lost all the weight you want to. From that point on, lotsa luck! _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: Its difficult (and its probably impossible) to compute how many calories there should be in someones daily breakfast, lunch, and dinner based on a list of foods nobodys bought yet; especially for a person who changes menus day to day. In other words, people simply dont have enough time, information, laboratory equipment, or mathematical skills to extrapolate a sensible daily three-meal menu out of caloric health tips (or even diet books), much less a list of foods that will enable them to lose a pound or two a week, with or without considerable daily exercise. Therefore, to determine what your constant 3-meal menu ought to be in order to lose weight, measure your weight-loss (or gain) as a result of your current constant 3-meal menu one or two weeks after the fact (and then adjust accordingly), instead of trying to calculate the number of calories in a theoretical list of foods you may or may not decide to eat in the future. Theres simply no better way to do it!

FAQ: Whats the best diet to lose weight?

What Acting Well says: Its more important that you ingest the nutrients your body needs than that you restrict your diet in order to lose weight. If you exercise sufficiently (which means touching the envelope every day), and dont eat more than you need to keep from being hungry, your body will gradually lose the excess weight that currently bothers or embarrasses you. (You should never lose more than two pounds per month, however.) Once people who are only slightly heavy reach their ideal weight, they may need to add food in order to avoid becoming too thin. Most people who have become more than slightly overweight, however, probably love food a little too much, and may always have to eat a little less than they would normally choose to eat in order to lose weight and keep it off. However, theres no need to go on a dietever. You should never starve yourself to become or stay thin. In order to choose which foods to eat in order to stay normal, consider the ancient Chinese saying: Good health comes from cooking your own food. This medical directive means that after youve been cooking for yourself for years, youll instinctively gather and prepare exactly the right ingredients your body requires. Experiments with cafeteria feeding of infants have revealed this same wisdom of the body. Therefore, in order to create the ideal 246

menu for your three meals per day, you may need to experiment, sometimes for months or years, until you know how to measure exactly the right quantities of daily foods you love to eat and that will keep you at your normal weight. Everyones genes are slightly different (except for identical twins), and so everyones ideal menu will be slightlyor sometimes greatlydifferent. When you get it right, dont change! Avoid variety. Listen to your body wisdom. In other words, you know what to do.

Mucis
Mucis is the music you hum in place of thinking profound thoughts. You hear it almost all the time during Morning Preparation (at least until you start Listening). Its the over-and-over-again thematic substance of popular songs (or, for some people, classical pieces). Its named in honor of Christopher Plummer, who, according to my cousin Ruth Bierman, who used to work at Twentieth Century Fox, used to refer to The Sound of Music, while he was starring in it with Julie Andrews, as The Sound of Mucus. (He apparently didnt think much of the enduring quality of the movie.) Mucis is ephemeral and imaginary, and doesnt affect other human beings. It seems a little like sleepwalking, and indeed can take the form of lolling about, as in: Take it from the top and fake it! Its melodies always promise resolution but never deliver. They seem never capable of finishing before losing all artistic quality and point. Yet, they keep vying for attention, following no score, sometimes remembering how things used to be. On the other hand, there often needs to be a run of nonsense before something can begin. For example, a gene may express a redundant string of 50 to 200 nonsense nucleotides before it starts to transport a piece of messenger RNA into cytoplasm. Thus, mucis can tell you much about your unconsciousbut if and only if (and when!) you become conscious of itwhich you should do at every opportunity. For one thing, becoming aware of mucis can stop it from intruding on your thoughts (or, more accurately, replacing them), thus making you more conscious. Mucis can be like a dream. When you analyze it, you may ask Where did it come from? and the answer may tell you, as in a dream, the places where your unconscious was ruminating. Thus, mucis can send interpretable messages. Its there because it wants something to be finished. Like life.

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Autosuggestion
Many people are familiar with the works of Maxwell Maltz, particularly his best-selling book, Psycho-Cybernetics. His ideas werent much different from those of mile Cou (18571926), the French psychotherapist proponent of autosuggestion, whose repeated formula (Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better) became the rage in England and America in the 1920s. (My own mother taught the phrase to me when I was a child.) Autosuggestion works, and Maltzs suggestions workto a point! If you continually rehearse the same lie to yourself, regardless of whether you ever come to believe what youre saying, youll eventually start acting on what you constantly repeat. You can thereby begin to perform actions that arent characteristic of your personality. You can close a sale better, even with difficult customers; you can attract more desirable sexual partners; and you can play a better game of golf using this well-documented technique. Actors practice autosuggestion all the time, yet no one thinks it mysterious. After all, actors still know the difference between reality and fiction, even if their convincing performances sometimes make it appear that they dont. However, anyone who practices autosuggestion also knows the difference between truth and lies. They know theyre not really getting better and better. They only perform as if they do; for the lies they tell themselves are averaged against all of their experiences; and their action system (that is, whatever controls their behavior) only counts the number of occurrences of what they say to themselves; it doesnt adjudicate the truth or falsity of what they say. Thus, autosuggestion can create a new reality that helps people achieve results they didnt think possible. Alas, such techniques only work for a while. An actor can be Hamlet for two hours onstage; but when he goes home, he knows hes no longer Hamlet. Likewise, autosuggestions eventually fail; and Cous works are gathering the dust.

How to Measure Portion Sizes

The idea sounds reasonable: the less volume you eat, the less pounds youll put on (or the more youll take off) over the long run. Therefore, reducing portion sizes will make you healthier. (One friend claims that he regularly pushes 60% of his food away every time. However, Ive watched him, and he doesnt!) The fact is, controlling portion sizes doesnt workexcept on a temporary basis. For example, if youre on a liquid diet, and a bottle of fortified milkshake is all you eat for every meal, the company that makes the

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milkshake measures out the portion for you. As long as youre on the diet, youll lose weight. Once you go off the diet, youll revert to habit and gain it all back. Theres one solution that does work, however. It couldnt be simpler, and its 100% effective. You do what the diet milkshake people do: you prepare and eat the same menu time after time, always pre-measuring your portions precisely (according to what will make you lose or maintain weight) so that you never have to make an estimate. For example, if you have pasta and tomato sauce every night (as do I), weigh or measure and make sure that every night you boil no more than two ounces of pasta (per person) in the water. After a while, youll get used to eating only two ounces of pasta every night. (The amount of sauce you pour over the pasta is bound to be approximately the same, as the pasta limits how much you can pour.) Eventually, eating more than two ounces of pasta becomes unthinkable. Youve solved the problem! But, you say, you need variety. Who can eat pasta every night? The answer is, you can! Its your only answer. However, your dinners must be really fresh and really good; and that takes time and lots of practice.

The Camera Obscura

Acting Well is something like punching a hole in a tent to create a camera obscura. A camera obscura (a dark room) can be created by punching a small hole in a box or in an opaque tent. Reflected light beams coming through the hole will focus into an inverted image of the outside scene on the opposite side of the tent. Ancient people viewed eclipses, and artists traced images of nature, by exploiting this light-focusing phenomenon. In 1826, J. N. Niepce converted a lensed lightproof box into the first photographic camera by focusing an image on light-sensitive paper. This metaphor is useful in understanding Morning Preparation; for doing Morning Preparation punches a tiny opening in the world through which truth is bent and sifted so that one may expand it, as required. Each day you do Morning Preparation you may punch a different hole in the tent (they knit up overnight). However, the truth outside the tent remains constant, although it will always appear somewhat dimmed inside the tent no matter how many years you keep at it. (Similarly, Acting Well isnt something you get better at. There are skills and techniques involved that are similar to techniques that actors use. However, you can get pretty good at acting skills very quickly. Otherwise, there could be no young skilled actors!) If you punch too many holes in a tent, the camera obscura effect is lost (the images overlap each other in a confusion of smeared light 249

beams). Thus, following the metaphor, a new student of the world is able to glimpse as real an image of the world as an elderly master. (An artists imaginationor ability to articulate itmay improve over time; but not an artists perceptions.) The master may remember more experiences of truth; but none will appear brighter than the day the work began.

Listening
Listening is the simplest and the first thing you can do. Its the only action you have to worry about right now; and its the one action you can always do to begin with. Its easy. You dont need any willpower just to listen. Do you think you can just listen for a moment to the world without? When youre really Listening, youre attaching meaning to things you thought had no meaning. Its a pleasurable revelation, and its the first achievement you accomplish in your Morning Preparation. Listening requires focusing. It also requires ignoring. Try to hear beyond the whirring. (The whirring, by the way, is a major reason why we discourage doing Morning Preparation in front of a computer!) Listen to whats beyond the machines and pipes in your room. Do you hear the traffic? You can hear birds in the country. In the city are also sounds that make up poetry and metaphors. Its up to you to become a connoisseur of those inhuman echoesthe way some people become connoisseurs of wines. A wine can be fruity; a sound can be throaty, or all sorts of things. Make a note to think about these things tomorrowto listen to the world outside your window as you begin Morning Preparation. Thats your first assignment. Listen! Listen to the traffic: its a parade. Its in the sky. Its in the city. Its on, over, and underneath the roads. Listen! Get close to those machines. They define your location. They fill you up with where you are. They put you somewhere dear. They put you in a people location, whether in the city or the country. Thats the most important point. Sounds make you aware of how much there is in the worldjust outside your doorthat you never even thought about! Keep Listening!

Asking Dr. Weill

Thinking I could get Dr. Weills famous 8-week prescription for health free over the Internet, I clicked my way through his website to 250

a section called Eight Weeks to a Healthy America. The first thing I read was Dr. Weills congratulations on my decision to embark on his step-by-step process for achieving optimum health. He warned me that the program would be challenging; but he also claimed that anyone committed to change could master it. I clicked on each of the eight links to find out what I could expect to be doing for the rest of the eight weeks. There wasnt much. Basically, there was one main tip offered per week: Week 1. Go into your pantry and throw out all your old and unhealthy oils. Week 2. Week 3. Week 4. Week 5. Week 6. Week 7. Week 8. Dont drink tap water. Buy organic food. Shield your bed from clock radio radiation. Buy air filters for your house. Spend 20 minutes in a sauna one day per week. Spend 20 minutes in a sauna two days per week. Do volunteer service.

Needless to say, I was disappointed. True, if Id paid for his book I would have gotten many more tips per week. Even his television programs, which are free, offer more exciting material. Nevertheless, what excuse was there to provide such meager and dubious offerings as to insult my intelligence? Here was advice more worthy of a crank than a medical doctor. What was challenging about it? Did fresh olive oil, bottled water, organic food, air filters, and saunas constitute lifestyle changes? Was there any kind of challenge that required willpower? Or were these tips just parts of an exceedingly sloppy website section that only I and I alone bothered to read all the way through? November 2000

The Real Me
(Excerpts from The Magic Bullet, the Acting Well Videotape) ROY SCHEIDER But thats how I convinced myself that the real character, the real person who I am, just doesnt smoke. 251

INTERVIEWER You said the real me, and this character does not smoke. ROY SCHEIDER (Agreeing) Mm-hm. INTERVIEWER Is it the character or is it the real you? How do you decide what a character is, and how do you decide what you are? ROY SCHEIDER Who is the person that Im most comfortable with, that I dont have to feel guilty about this or that or overeating or doing anything over, or doing anything under? Which is the character that contributes the most to my health and to my well-being? And if I really stop and think about that, then thats the character I try to go with, thats the character that exercises, tries to eat responsibly, thinks healthy thoughts, is not a cynic, and it goes on and on and on and on! INTERVIEWER Do you feel that you have a public persona, or do you think that this is just the way you always are? ROY SCHEIDER Well, I cannot help but be a human being who has worked as a professional for such a long time that when you put a camera on me or a light on me I suddenly, I sort of rise to the occasion. I know that I have to project a certain amount of energy. I have to be honest. Theres a certain part of me that, if Im not honest, with you right here and now, its not going to sound very good, because the camera doesnt lie. So that same principle of being honest and not lying, works in daily life as well.

FAQ: How Much Fat Should I Include in My Diet?

What They say: Eat no more than 30 percent of your total calories from fat: about 40 grams in a 1,200-calorie diet. In other words, youre going to have to calculate how many grams of fat youre likely to consume on a particular day, every day from now on, then alter your menu accordingly. If theres going to be too much fat in Tuesdays lunch, cut something out from Tuesdays dinner. Therefore, if you havent created a regularized three-meal menu (that is, a list of foods you eat every single day, with only one 252

meals exception per week), youre going to have an awful lot of figuring out to do every day for the rest of your life! _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: Trying to solve these kinds of problems on a daily basis is completely unproductive. No one is going to do it. Some people may pretend to do it, examining inadequately detailed labels on the sides of packages, and feeling better about themselves. However, they cant possibly know the exact amount of fat in a particular piece of meat, for example, without destroying the meat and calculating the amount of fat in it. Whats the point? Of course, you could eliminate all fat from your diet. However, you need a certain amount of fat for good health! In other words, theres no point in worrying about how much fat youre getting in your diet. You cant know for sure; and if youve settled on a regularized three-meal menu after several months of experimentation, itll be highly unlikely that your diet will include too much or too little fat according to anyones specifications. Therefore, stop worrying about fat grams!

FAQ: Who are you?

What They say: Were the doctors and masters with degrees in medicine, physiology, and nutrition. Weve published best-selling self-help books and videotapes about diet and fitness, the titles of which are on everybodys lips. We lecture and appear on talk shows, and give interviews to inform the public what to do (and, incidentally, to promote whatever it is were selling). In other words, were the Lifestyle Specialists, and we know more about your life and all your problems than you do! Since were the ultimate authorities on every subject, only we can lead you to the truth.

Therefore, you must do exactly as we say. (For we are never wrong!) _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: Many, if not all, of the health problems suffered in America are due to the fact that doctors, teachers, writers, gurus, trainers, preach253

ers, coaches, and other self-appointed experts have been instructing people what to do as if they were lecturing to students who were sitting in an audience. This system is sometimes learned and intelligent, and at other times incredibly stupid. Either way, it doesnt often get people to behave in healthier ways except temporarily. In other words, All the worlds a stage, not a lecture hall. If youre going to change your life, you have to take a leading role and change your actions; not be content to sit in the audience and expect someone to tell you what to do. Therefore, our job is not to prove our point on the blank screen of your imagination, but, more simply, to direct your actions during a few limited moments of your day. Your job is to become a major player who improves the world by creating and taking charge of your character.

An Unsuccessful Argument
Acting Well isnt a theory (or someones idea), its a technique, which means that its something you practice, not something you think about in order to get inspired to do. To learn how to act well, you have to practice the technique so often that you dont have to think about it any more. In that regard, its like roller-skatingbut without the rink or the risk. Acting Well is like practicing magic (that is, the slight-of-hand type, not the do it with mirrors type). It requires a certain amount of skill (acquired solely through repetition, not reading or talking about it), and it requires a certain amount of planning. Then, when you do it, people will wonder how you accomplish your effects. How did you lose so much weight? theyll ask. You must have great willpower! You dont; and theres nothing supernatural involved, even if real nature isnt easy to explain. How do you explain juggling? It looks like magic, but it depends on rehearsal. If you fail to master any of the skills put forth in this book, you wont benefit from reading the book. Magic isnt about imagining rabbits. Its about producing real rabbits out of real hats. The illusion is in the eye of the beholder, not the magician; and its a mistake. There cant be mistakes in the brain of a magician. If youve been skimming through the book before deciding whether or not to do what the book suggests you do, then you might as well close the book now and forget about it. It will be a waste of time. Nothing can be proved to you through argument. Success only comes from what you do.

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FAQ: Is Yoga a Good Exercise?

What They say: Research on mind-body exercise programs such as yoga and tai chi reveal that they have significant mental and physical value. In other words, incorporating approaches such as mind-body exercise with existing health promotion and cardiac rehabilitation services can improve self-efficacy and long-term adherence to healthy behavior as well as improve personal stress management skills.

Therefore, some experts recommend yoga or similar mind-body exercises to stay healthy. _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: Yoga is a serious Hindu religious practice that may take years to master. It is at least 5,000 years old, and it was not invented in order to extend physical or psychological health benefits to its practitioners. Among other things, yoga and other mind-body exercises cannot begin to affect your metabolism sufficiently to counterbalance a tendency to gain weight. In other words, if youre overweight, dont fool yourself into thinking that practicing yoga (or any flexibility exercise) would be a better single choice for you than any strong, daily, aerobic activity. Therefore, you should probably not waste your time learning to do yoga if you have only a limited opportunity, every day, to practice a single serious fitness exercise. If you do have plenty of time for additional physical or recreational activities, yoga is an excellent practice whose spiritual values far transcend any weight loss, relaxation properties, or other practical health benefits you may derive. As an Orthodox Jew would not lift a Torah every day in order to stimulate endorphins or build stronger arm muscles, Americans shouldnt misuse esoteric spiritual practices for secular purposes or because it makes them feel good. We insult (or more often amuse) those who understand and take these religious practices seriously.

Anxiety
Anxiety is part of a twisted cauldron of sensations. Just as back problems can give you the sum total of many things going on in various injured tissues in the back, anxiety is usually a kind of fallout from childhood. Often its a fear of abandonment. If you ever got lost 255

in a department store or in a crowd on a city street and your parents were nowhere around, youve felt separation anxiety. Anxiety and fear can be a smoothing force, smoothing down the rough edges that grate against you and undignify you. To be afraid is to meet your responsibilities with courage. Thus, fear is a unifying force. Its always there, ready to be drawn on, ready to be felt, but rarely fully felt (although it can be pulled into awareness, as one of Morning Preparations techniques does). Anxiety is like owning a reflection that you cant see unless you lean over to look into a mirror. Morning Preparation helps you lean over. Is it your connection to yourself you fear to lose? Is that what fear of abandonment is all about? Is that what terrifies the confused, lost child in the department storethe fear, always readily available, that keeps watch over you, keeps you from straying too far and getting lost? Abandon the self, and the body will abandon the brain. How would that feel? Is that the fear behind the fear of abandonment? Remember that the ego is a surrogate parent, a substitute for those who used to care for you. It was they who once abandoned you. The function of free-floating fear may be to keep your inner child afraid to stray and get lost.

Sound Pollution
Most often, while listening, youll be in a room with windows through which you can hear audible sounds from the city or country. The windows may be opened if the sounds arent too noisy. Closed is usually best. The sounds should blend with each other, but you should be able to discern car horns, birds, etc. Avoid sensible sounds. If you can repeat the words that a radio or television announcer is saying from somewhere in the distance, or if the lyrics of a song on the radio are familiar, or if you can identify the melody of radio or phonograph music, then you should insert simple earplugs while doing Morning Preparation (or find a different room in which to work). The problem with understanding words is that youll usually be subjecting yourself, in one way or another, to the message Buy, buy, buy! More than any other source, it will be sales messages that bother you with sound pollution. Sometimes the sound of a radio or television is so distant that it blends with the sounds of the city; and thats fine. You can make earplugs out of squares of toilet paper soaked in a little bit of water. Drugstore models usually restrict too much soundyou dont want to go deaf to everything! Use as little water as possible since the more water you use the more sound you exclude. Its important that you be able to hear enough sound through the earplugs to interpret. 256

Sometimes dry toilet paper, alone, inserted in the ears will suffice. Interpreting the sound, means to be able to imagine its origin. Accuracy of interpretation is neither necessary nor desirable. Be imaginative!

Theoretical Considerations
Acting Well isnt a theory (or someones idea), its a technique, which means that its something you practice, not something you think about in order to get inspired to do. To learn how to act well, you have to practice the technique so often that you dont have to think about it any more. In that regard, its like roller-skatingbut without the rink or the risk. Acting Well is like practicing magic (that is, the slight-of-hand type, not the do it with mirrors type). It requires a certain amount of skill (acquired solely through repetition, not reading or talking about it), and it requires a certain amount of planning. Then, when you do it, people will wonder how you accomplish your effects. How did you lose so much weight? theyll ask. You must have great willpower! You dont; and theres nothing supernatural involved, even if real nature isnt easy to explain. How do you explain juggling? It looks like magic, but it depends on rehearsal. If you fail to master any of the skills put forth in this book, you wont benefit from reading the book. Magic isnt about imagining rabbits. Its about producing real rabbits out of real hats. The illusion is in the eye of the beholder, and its a mistake. There cant be mistakes in the brain of a magician. If you intend to skim through the book before you decide whether to do what the book says you should, you may as well put the book down now and forget about it. It will be a waste of time. Nothing can be proved through argument. Success only comes from what you do.

FAQ: Shall I Accept Myself as a Fat Person?

What They say: Some people are constitutionally fat. The healthiest thing they can do for themselves is accept being overweight for the rest of their life. In other words, there may be (and the implication is, there probably are in your case) hormonal, physiological, ethnic, ra257

cial, genetic, psychological, or even astrological reasons why its futile for you to try to be thin. Therefore, stop beating yourself up over what you cant change! Dont bother to do anything to get thinner. _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: Theres no theoretical or physiological reason why most overweight people cant lose all of their excess weight and keep it off. In other words, the experts dont know what to tell some of you to do. Therefore, they expect you to accept their failure as your own. Nevertheless, weight problems have created a $100 billion industry. That figure, together with the fact that more than half of Americans are overweight, suggests that many fat specialists are selling worthless products, or giving incomplete, misleading, or incorrect advice that causes untold numbers of people to experience humiliating defeat. Meanwhile, some fat specialists, who fail to help peopleand worse, are nevertheless becoming obscenely rich. Therefore, you dont have to accept yourself as a fat person! However, you do have to accept responsibility for having created the fat person you are! If you wish to be a thin person, you have to create the thin person you want to be. Its an acting problem, not a food problem; and it can only be solved through acting techniques, not starvation diets.

An Example of How People Change

If you begin practicing Acting Well over the next six-weeks, your experience may be similar to the following when it comes to choosing a regular dessert: Week 1: Week 2: Week 3: You refuse offers of dessert to see what happens. You find you miss desserts after lunch and dinner, and so you try eating fruit as a substitute dessert. You find that fruit doesnt satisfy you as a reward. In other words, youd rather eat fruit as part of your breakfast and lunch, and a real dessert as a reward at the end of lunch and dinner. You try to eliminate desserts altogether! You discover a low-fat substitute dessert and plan to try it out. At last, youve found something you really lovein your very own supermarket! Furthermore, it works for an entire 258

Week 4: Week 5: Week 6:

week! Therefore, you stock up on this new item and eat it after every lunch and dinner. Its so good that nothing else tempts you. Its your regular dessert from now on. The point is that a new, healthier habit wont form unless youre willing to make a progression of honest attempts. Think of them as scientific experiments. No scientist expects to know the answers in advance. Therefore, no book that lists The 100 Best Low-Fat Desserts can help you deal with the slow rate of change that most people experience. Nor is such a book likely to deliver even a single dessert youll want to eat regularly.

Acting Well at Work

Success in the workplace depends on luck and circumstances. Acting Well wont change your luck, but it will stop your selfdestructive tendencies. Youre sure to work more efficiently, probably longer hours, enjoy your travels, hobbies, or whatever you do for a living more than you ever have. Youll feel as though you only have to work only at those tasks you really like to do (which doesnt mean youll slough off the rest; only that youll learn to enjoy some things you thought you hated). Youll persist in struggling with tough problems longer than you thought you could; and youll have no doubt that one of these days youll meet success in a really big, prestigious way! There wont be such a difference between your work life and the rest of your life. Youll enjoy both parts, and youll stop dividing your days between the hours when you have to do things and the breaks when you can do the things you want to do. Youll look forward to the dawns red streaks that wake you as well as to the twilight gold that marks the transition to whatever entertains you. Sometimes youll mix things up. Maybe youll read the newspaper after lunch instead of during breakfast; and maybe youll immerse yourself better in those elective activities when you schedule them differently. Throughout the day, youll feel the way you used to in your childhood when no one forced you to do a thing.

FAQ: Should I Walk More?

What They say: If you want to lose weight, you should become physically ac259

tive. Try walking 30 minutes a day most days of the week. In other words, just regular walking and exercising four days a week have been proven beneficial to peoples health.

Therefore, just regular walking four days a week is all you need to do. _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: It may be true that walking as a regular exercise is beneficial physiologically; but psychologically speaking, in order to burn enough calories to lose weight, you would have to walk for such a long time (for example, ten miles, or several hours a day) that youre likely to reverse the hormonal benefits of exercise (such as an increase in testosterone), which will make you feel depressed and unhappy. Within a matter of weeks, these psychological side effects may force you to stop performing regular walking as an exercise. In other words, although it might appear that anything is better than nothing, simply walking (whether fast or slow doesnt affect the outcome) will eventually be counterproductive as a fat-burning activity. Therefore, you must be able to accomplish the equivalent of fast running (or biking uphill, for example) for an average of one minute, without getting winded, six times over a half-hour period, every single day without fail, except for illnesses, emergencies, extreme weather, etc. Simple walking cannot play any role in such daily routines.

Louis XIV
One of the State policies of the Sun King was to make it fashionable to wear extremely expensive clothing in Court. Consequently, many of the 17th Century French nobility gathered around Louis XIV went bankrupt in order to keep up appearances. These poor nobles were forced to borrow money from the crown. Their financial dependency made them submissivewhich was the point. Such displays of the Kings fashionable taste extended to matters of food. One reason why French cuisine is so exquisite is its heritage from the days when 100 dishes might be served for dinner at Versailles. The peasant class, of course, had to be content with eating the same things every day. Variety (in food, as well as in clothing) was reserved for kings to display their powernot commoners who had no power. When the European and American middle classes emerged generations later, manners were established based on the earlier conspicuous consumption of royalty (one of whose functions was to establish the best example of how to live). Therefore, if you could afford 260

it, you would naturally wear different fashions for different seasons. You would also observe the customary variety at the dinner table. Theres nothing essentially healthy about eating different meals for dinner every night of the week. All such explanations (for example, getting a better balance of nutrients) are rationalizations for poor imitations of noble power. Nutritionists and others who provide such rationalizations are mainly selling self-serving recommendations.

FAQ: How Fast Can I Lose Weight?

What They say: People who lose weight gradually are more likely to keep the weight off. In other words, dont try to diet too fast or youre likely to gain back the weight.

Therefore, beware of quick weight loss diets. _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: Most experts dont define what they mean by gradual. They can mean anywhere from two pounds a week to nothing at all for several weeks, then another pound or two a few weeks later. Of course its much easier to go on a two-week starvation diet in order to lose a lot of weight quickly than to deny yourself for months at a time, losing only a few ounces a week. No one should be expected to suffer for such a long time, and no one ever does. In other words, avoid quick weight-loss diets, at least until youve established extremely healthy eating habits. On the other hand, dont even think about going on a long-term starvation diet that will take you months or years to lose weight slowly enough for your body to adjust to the loss of weight. Therefore, find a system that allows you to eat only slightly less than a normal person should eat; but exercise strenuously daily so that you lose four to eight ounces per week until youve reached your normal weight. Then eat normally, continue to exercise daily, and youll never gain back the weight.

Orange Juice
Many American students encounter an educational system that tries to extract (or abstract, which may be worse) the essential information or techniques that constitute the essence of a particular subject. 261

This process is like selling concentrated orange juice to a public that prefers sweetness, convenience, and speed of ingestion to the more complicated process of peeling and eating slices of orange. If you consider that drinking a glass of reconstituted orange juice is less interesting than peeling an orange, you may taste the flavorless reasons that American higher education is less interesting than it should be. Every orange is slightly different. Not so, with reconstituted orange juice! If concentrated results are all that is desirable, why not take vitamin C and fiber pills instead of drinking orange juice in the morning? On the other hand, if people really care about convenience, why not inject cellulose and sucrose into their arms with an intravenous needle so they wont have to swallow anything? In other words: If you only go for results, you can wind up far from your original intention, which should have been to savor the taste of an orange at breakfast. (By the way, concentrated orange juice probably has far too much concentrated sugar in it to be healthy to drink every morning. Many people get so tired during the morning, after drinking orange juice for breakfast, that they desperately want to take a nap!)

The Magic Bullet

(Excerpts from The Magic Bullet, the Acting Well Videotape) DR. SHAKNOVICH I think it is exceedingly important for patients to become full-fledged partners in the lifelong effort of health maintenance. Discipline, consistency, awareness, resourcefulness, being realistic and opportunistic, being able to partner effectively with others who may be of assistance, physicians and non-physicians alike. All of those go a very long way, in my opinion, in improving outcomes of chronic conditions certainly, in cardiology. INTERVIEWER From your standpoint as a doctor, do you think that Acting Well is on the right track? DR. SHAKNOVICH With exercise, there is no equivalent of the medications that lower your cholesterol. There is noto my knowledgeprogram that allows a physician to reassure the patient that if this program is followed, the patient would be able to change his lifestyle and now incorporate regular exercise. Acting Well, then, offers an interesting possibility of being an instrument, then, that does allow physicians to change their approach to exercise and make it more like their current approach to cholesterol. So lets say this is the Magic Bullet; this is 262

something that allows everyone to then somehow miraculously exercise on a regular basis. Terrific! Then this becomes what is recommended; and then there is insistence that it be followed, because there are data to suggest that this translates into better compliance and better performance on the part of the patient.

Colossal Blunders
A few years ago, while working on a fundraising project for a heart clinic in St. Petersburg, Russia, I started researching some of the literature and facilities devoted to preventive cardiology. While reviewing current practices concerning weight loss, exercise, smoking cessation, and stress reduction (which are the four main areas involving prevention about which cardiologists are concerned), I began to sense that some of the recommendations were not only inconsistent and contradictory; they were demonstrably wrong! I started calling these flawed recommendations Colossal Blunders. The U.S. Department of Agriculture pyramid scheme (which is my irreverent name for a pyramid of food recommendations that puts grain foods on a wide bottom and sparse meat condiments at a narrow top) provides an example of one of the worst of these flawed recommendations. When I discovered that the USDA recommended that someone of my height and weight consume the equivalent of four loaves of bread per week, I knew I had uncovered a Colossal Blunder! Not surprisingly, one of the main functions of the USDA is to support the American food industry. Sometimes government support runs counter to the health needs of the nation. Subsidizing tobacco farmers is a good example of counterproductive government meddling supported by lobbying groups of questionable ethics and sense. Many Colossal Blunders are scattered throughout this edition. I hope that Acting Well will help suppress the worst examples.

Why This Book Is Needed

Despite the mountains of articles, books, lectures, and theses that have been written about the art of acting, we have nothing that can practically assist the actor at the moment he needs to realize his creativity; or that can help the teacher at the moment he confronts his pupil. Everything written about the theatre has been philosophical quite interesting, quite deep, to be sure; and beautifully expressed about the desirable results one ought to attain in art, or critiquing the successes and failures that others have already reached. All these writings are valuable and useful; but as practical guides for artists in the theatre, they offer no directions on how to attain those results, on what one needs to do first, second, third, and so on, with an actor who is a mere beginner, or for one who is experienced and even spoiled. 263

What kind of exercises analogous to the solfeggi used by singers should be practiced by an actor? What kind of scales, what arpeggi can the actor use to develop the necessary creative feelings and experiences? We must give them numbers in order to systematize these exercises so that they may be practiced in the school and in the home. All books and theoretical works about the theatre are silent on these issues. There isnt a single, useful textbook! Konstantin Stanislavski, My Life in Art

FAQ: Does your system really work?

What They say: Its important that you never let yourself get hungry, because if you do, you might get out of control and go off your diet. We have testimonials up the gazork by people who dont belong to the Screen Actors Guild and therefore arent paid to lie through their teeth about our wonderful system that they have been following for at least a day and a night and sometimes even longer! In other words, if they tell you their system works, beware!

Therefore, you know what to do. _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: Acting Well has not been subjected to double blind clinical trials yet, but it will be. In the meantime, so far, its worked for everyone whos done the logs for at least three weeks, which is the minimum to which you have to commit. In other words, although Acting Well doesnt yet have an objective, scientific stamp of approval, the Stanislavski system on which its based has been in operation for more than a century. The main feature of the Stanislavski system is that when actors commit to doing it, no matter what kind of role theyre playing, the system always produces results. Audiences may not like the results, but the actors dont have problems getting them. Therefore, theres no theoretical reason why the system shouldnt work for you to produce the results you want, over time. Dont worry about what your audiences think, unless, of course, youre a professional.

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FAQ: Food Logs

Do I keep a food log on your system? _______________________________________________________ What They say: If youre really serious about losing weight, you must not only record the time and date of the ingestion of every morsel of food you eat or drink, but you must determine the exact number of calories and fat grams of everything on your plate before it enters your mouth. You must file these records with us periodically for mysterious reasons known only to us. Eventually we issue a report thats virtually identical for everyone and that has nothing to do with your particular case, but wed like you to think it does. In the meantime, keeping a food log is good for you because it raises your consciousness about eating. In other words, busy hands are happy hands.

Therefore, it couldnt hurt. _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: The proper method of controlling weight has nothing to do with raising your consciousness about food. Its more like the opposite: to neutralize your obsession about eating. Therefore, keeping a food log isnt just useless, its counterproductive. In other words, a food log is a manipulative technique that only benefits the person or company that commissions the log. Therefore, while youre Acting Well, you will keep a daily log. However, you will never be asked to report what foods you ate. No ones interested!

FAQ: Is It My Genes?
Can you help me despite my genetic tendency to be fat? _______________________________________________________ What They say: Some fat people just cant lose more than 15% of their weight no 265

matter what they do. These people should be content to be mildly obese or at least pleasantly plump for the rest of their life. In other words, if you have bad genes, forget about getting thin.

Therefore, get used to it. _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: Why scientists blame genetics or hormones for weight problems is anyones guess. Theres no evidence that more than a slim percentage of obesity is caused by genetic or hormonal malfunctions. The cruel and terrible advice to simply give up is terrible science probably based on clinical trials in which people were expected to take off a pound a week or more instead of losing weight at a significantly lower rate, such as a pound or two per month. In other words, the results of many trials, and the advice based on them, might have been very different if the experimenters and their subjects hadnt been impatient. Therefore, learn the virtue of patience! Its highly probable that your ability to control your weight will have more to do with technique than it will with genes, hormones, or other unique factors beyond your control.

The Morning Track

To make a train work, heavy labor points two immutable, smooth, steel ribbons straight into the distance, converging, vanishing, belying the hard labor that drove the spikes in beams to support, with careful regularity, the burden of the weight of speeding cars, one by one by one, over and upon them. Did men lay the line? Or gods? Once laid, the track can only change through renewed labor, placing mutant steel elsewhere, the older spikes torn up. Then appears another immutable testament to untidy, vanished work, producing straight or gently curving, regularly spaced, twin arrows of steel, going somewhere mysterious. Thus, on your Morning Track, create your itinerary; then observe it ever after, religiously like ritual, which it is: following, like real geography, the stopping points that precede, and those that follow. Dont change anything. If you change one day, next day, why not change again? Every day will waste your time deciding better choices. For what reason? What gain? The liturgies of all religions evolve through many generations. Changes come but carefully and slow. If you insist on alterations you will either abandon the regular itinerary altogether (having spent 266

your choices plowing through unknown and unworkable territories), or will found a new religion, whose endurance will depend on how many followers survive your inevitable demise.

FAQ: Are Aerobics Classes Good?

What They say: These fitness classes utilize exercises set in patterns to music to promote muscle strength, improve muscle tone, strengthen heart, lungs, and blood vessels, and develop greater flexibility, coordination, and agility. In other words, we promise that youll have more fun while exercising than you ever thought possible! In fact, youll enjoy the exercises so much after completing one of our aerobics classes that you'll probably enroll in all the others, whether Dance, Step, Slide, or our other wellness classes.

Therefore, be well! Sign up today! _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: Virtually all exercise classes, from aerobics to spinning to Army Basic Training, are the same. A leader (or puppetmaster) stands before a group of initiates and demonstrates rhythmic movements. Members of the class are expected to mimic these movements. In other words, theres never any training in these classes. Since no skills are taught, theres nothing to take away. Therefore, these classes do nothing to encourage or help people develop lifelong fitness habits. (Theres simply no way you can get better and better at mimicry!) Whatever benefits accrue from them are more suitable for kindergarten children than they are for adults seriously concerned about making adjustments in their lives to compensate for a sedentary lifestyle.

FAQ: Is This System Just Another Diet?

What They say: Everyone knows that diets dont work! In other words, we know youve probably tried all the diets by now, and youre still overweight. So, whos going to believe us if we claim we invented a diet that works? Therefore, were going to call our invention a system (or a 267

program, or a plan, or a method, or Acting Well, or whatever). As long as it isnt a diet, you can be sure itll work! Our system is different, of course. Its instantaneous. You can eat all the fats and sugars you like and watch the pounds melt away. You only have to exercise five minutes a year, and you can still develop the abs (and/or pecs) of death. Now hows that? _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: You dont have to go on a diet in order to lose a quarter of a pound a week. You just have to control what you eat and touch the exercise envelope during a 30-minute per day routine. Thats all there is to it. In other words, losing weight is truly simple, and our system isnt a diet! Therefore, if you create the right exercise habit, the rest falls into place.

Touching the Envelope

It isnt that you have to push the envelope every day when you exercise for fitness. (Thats not a great idea!) Its that you need to touch the envelope every day, and therebyover several months and yearspush the envelope farther than you think you can push it now. Youll never come close to touching the envelope by walking, doing housework, or raking leaves (typical activities that puppetmasters recommend for daily fitness). Dont try to kill two birds with one stone by combining fitness with recreation or chores. Youll kill yourself, not the birds, in the process! How many times a year can you rake leaves? How many days of the week do you need to do strenuous housework? Since these activities can never become meaningful, daily, enjoyable habits, theyre useless as fitness exercises. Doctors who say that most days of the week is a sufficient fitness schedule should be held accountable for killing people! Their timetable misses the point completely, and therefore people die of heart disease. Many lives are lost because people take this kind of authoritative nonsense seriously. Most days of the week is the worst! It isnt that exercise does you good; its doing the same exercise every day that makes a crucial difference. What meaningful fitness exercise you do daily doesnt matter as much as that you do it daily.

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Making Life an Art

Life is a work of art, and we must all be scientists and creative people to live well. No one can tell you how, but you can watch out for good examples. Art is perfection. What seems like monotony to the nonprofessional, for the scientist is attention to detail, repetition of experiments, verification of truth, or just the perfectionism of the artist. You dont have to be a professional to perfect your days. However, you can discover how to fix the perfect meal. It takes a long time (months or years) to be able to create one perfect day. You begin earlier by keeping track of how many hours you spent on meaningful work, how many on office duties, and how many (during the workday) on rest periods, including breakfast, lunch, and so on. What was your impression during the day? Was it a happy day or a stressed-out one? Did you use a routine to get going on meaningful work? Is life getting easier? Check the answers against the numbers you record while keeping track of time. The correlations may confirm what you already suspect but dont want to admit. Everythings getting better and better!

A Fountain of Youth
Youth is a wonderful thing, said George Bernard Shaw. What a crime to waste it on children! This bitter observation contradicts the benefits that Acting Well makes possible. For one of Jonathan Swifts Thoughts on Various Subjects was: No wise man ever wished to be younger. Acting Well helps you understand that right now is the best time of your life. Right here is the best place to be. You are the best character to play. Therefore, waste nothing! Train yourself to listen and watch carefully (for example, during your Morning Preparation and World Walk) in order to miss less of the life that normally passes by. The wasted youth that youth appears to countenance is the same waste a person at any age experiences whos inattentive to lifes benefits. Life extends its tendrils every moment were awake. Most people ignore and waste those moments. Acting Well helps waste less of them. That extra dividend, though small, is the youthfulness that is otherwise lost, but that can be regained and retained while Acting Wellwhich can be like discovering a fountain of youth whose waters flow until ones last day on earth.

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FAQ: Why Should I Lose Weight?

What They say: Since its easy for thin people to stay thin, its obvious that once you slim down, its going to be much easier for you to continue to be thin. In other words, thinness carries within it the virtue of being easy to maintain.

Therefore, theres no logical reason why you cant lose a lot of weight as fast as you want and keep it off. _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: Lets say you used to weigh 200 pounds, and youve managed to get yourself down to 175 pounds. It will take you as much determination (and maybe more!) to stay where you are than it took you to lose the 25 pounds! In other words, it doesnt get easier to maintain weight once you lose it; it can get much harder! Therefore, you may need a lifelong set of new habits that will take you slowly and methodically to your ideal weight, then keep you there. However, after months or years of being thin, it does become easier to stay thin. Just dont expect it, or be impatient.

FAQ: Diets
Do I have to be on a diet for the rest of my life? _______________________________________________________ What They say: Didnt you know? Life is a diet! In other words, stick with us, kiddo! We (and a lot of others) will tell you what you can eat and what you cant eat from now on!

Therefore, if you want to lose weight, you must be eternally vigilant! Life is a diet, and food is the baddie. If anything goes wrong, youre the one whos punished! _______________________________________________________

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What Acting Well says: Diet can mean two things: either a permitted group of foods that you regularly eat (what should properly be called a menu); or a prohibited group of foods that you must avoid. Every healthy person should be able to define his or her diet in the first sense. No one should have to define a list of prohibited foodsever. In other words, while Acting Well, you will always eat so many different kinds of healthy foods in permitted quantities on a daily basis that you wont ever crave more. Therefore, the rest of your life can be diet-free.

FAQ: How Can I Exercise More?

What They say:

Walk to work, dont ride! Climb stairs instead of taking elevators!

Rake leaves or shovel snow instead of paying the neighborhood kids to do these chores! _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: These nostrums sound like sensible advice. However, these optional activities wont work because theyre not regular. Only regularly practiced fitness exercises can keep you fit. It doesnt matter if you rake leaves once a month or shovel snow four times a year. What good will it do if youre sedentary all the other days of the year? In fact, its dangerous to shovel snow if youre not used to strenuous exercise! Thus, you cant keep looking for chores to do around the house or the yard and thereby lose weight. The thinking behind such advice is ridiculous. The only safe way you can become used to getting enough exercise every day is through daily practice of the same routine. Make it a habit and youll get to the point where you cant do without it. Only then will you get enough exercise.

FAQ: Are You an Atheist?

What the author says: Thats a fair question about which no one should equivocate. Theres no question that the Western communitys collective belief in God has been a major catalyst in our civilization. Christianity, for example, was a great fertilizer in inspiring such magnificent examples of human creativity as the The St. Matthew Passion and the Sistine Chapel. From an anthropologists point of view, however, 271

such fertilizer can only be viewed as the intellectual remains of honorable ancestors whose legends metamorphosed into the stories of immortal gods. Although the decomposing matter in actual fertilizer contributes great value when properly spread on gardens and farms, no one believes that the value of the nitrogen in manure is equal to the value of the lilies it may nurture. Thus, for me, a pound of bullshit is worth less than a pound of cotton. Therefore, although I respect the helpful intentions and literary achievements of all religions, I cant take their fairy tales seriously except to the extent that they can be miraculously transformed into the works of a Bach or Michelangelo.

What I Should Do
I should start my new life! I should start taking care of myself! I should start a new diet (that Ill continue)! I should start an exercise class! I should start a yoga class! I should start meditating twice a day! I should start a jogging program! I should start getting annual physicals and doing what the doctor says! I should start going to the dentist every six months! I should start being more social! I should start making people like me! I should start being a better parent or a nicer child! Or I should stop smoking! I should stop eating between meals! I should stop putting so much sugar and salt on everything! I should stop eating three egg omelets every morning! I should stop ordering thick steaks with all the fat left on! I should stop whoring! I should stop worrying! I should stop hating the person I love! I should stop hating myself! But when push comes to shove, I dont really want to start or stop any of it! Therefore, everything will always stays the same!

FAQ: Chromium Picolinate

Will chromium picolinate help me lose weight? _______________________________________________________ What They say: Chromium inhibits the synthesis of new fat from carbohydrates; thus freeing the mitochondria to burn already stored fat. In addition, chromium increases the effectiveness of insulin and optimizes glucose metabolism. In other words, chromium is important for fat metabolism, enzyme activation, and the regulation of cholesterol. 272

Therefore, chromium picolinate, which is a highly utilizable form of chromium, promotes optimal regulation of cholesterol, as well as glucose and fat metabolism. You can take it to lose weight quickly and without dieting. _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: Jane Brody, in The New York Times on October 26, 1995, reported that when hamster cells were exposed to reasonable doses of chromium picolinate, the cells suffered chromosomal damage as high as 18 times the amount that occurred in cells exposed to other chromium compounds. Such damage is considered an indicator of a substances cancer-causing potential. In other words, chromium picolinate appears to be one of those quick-weight-loss panaceas that offer fat-burning abilities while threatening your life. Therefore, maybe youd better steer clear of this stuff!

Quarantines
You should try to practice Acting Well in a communal atmosphere. One of the worst problems with most quick weight loss diets is that they create quarantine situations at the dinner table for those on diets. That is, most people on diets assume that they cant safely eat at the same table as people who might be indulging in a variety of new taste treats in whatever quantities they please. The main disease those who are quarantined are trying to avoid isnt obesity but guilt. Quarantine situations are for sick people, not healthy people. Therefore, you should strive to create as healthy and normal a life as possible while losing weight. In addition, your diet should be as close to eating normal amounts of satisfying food as possible. Never deny! (You wont have to lie!) One of the worst things you can do is to isolate yourself from other people while undergoing rigorous dietary prohibitions. The temptation to cast all dietary sense aside when the goal weight is finally reached can overwhelm the strongest individual.

FAQ: Should I Eat Special Foods?

What They say: I want you to eat broccoli, because theres a chemical in broccoli that protects you against cancer. In addition, cooked tomatoes protect against prostate cancer. 273

 Etc. _______________________________________________________ What Acting Well says: So what? If you dont eat these health foods every single day (and in sufficient quantities), their chemical properties against diseases are irrelevant. To recommend foods that have demonstrated some health benefit in laboratory experiments on rats is foolishunless youre part of the food industry that benefits from marketing specific foods by frightening the public (you might get cancer!), then offering salvation (but heres a way out!), in which case youre more clever than we! You should not create a three-meal daily menu based on current health claims attaching to particular foods. If youre a man who loves cooked tomatoes, lucky you! (Maybe.) However, you should pay more attention to your attraction to the tomatoes than to their healing or preventative qualities, which science may change from year to year.

Kinesthesia
Kinesthesia comprises the subliminal sensations in the body that you normally ignore, particularly the sensations of muscular movements and tension. Its disturbing when any bodily sensations rise to the level of pain where they cant be ignored. Usually these twinges, itchesor just the feeling of blood coursing through the veins that accompanies life erupt from all sections, surfaces, and interior organs of the body and disappear as swiftly. Although at every moment, many sensations are happening, you can only select one or two at a time to raise above the level of the subliminal. Sometimes, when you concentrate on one of these sensations it may shock your consciousness into a better kind of awareness. The best time to try this technique is following Listening. For example, you may suddenly realize that you want to itch; but you also realize that you dont really have to scratch. Theres no real need for relief when youre totally aware; theres only a need for more consciousness. Youve become your character.

Stanleys Diet
We met up with Stanley again (still fat), and asked him what happened to the diet on which he claimed hed lost 20 pounds. He sort of shrugged and turned away. Then he turned back and bright274

ened: But...! Pointing his finger in the air he said, My doctor says, the new theory is: its not about fats, its about calories! At last, he found the answer to why he couldnt lose weight. He was thinking wrong! He was following the wrong theory! Now he finally got it right! Nevertheless, he gained back all the weight he lost. What did he mean by calories? You mean its about quantity, not quality? we asked him. Thats obvious, we continued. You can eat all the right foods and avoid all the wrong ones; but if you eat too much of a good thing youre still going to gain. Most Americans take in too large portions. Thats why were an overweight nation. Stanley agreed. Of course!

The Log
As other important parts of the day occur, you may extend your record keeping so that eventually you can quantify the value of each day. That is, you will know how much time you spent that day doing what you wanted to do, how much time you spent doing what you had to do, how much time you rested, and what were the proportions between them. (The ideal proportion is 1/3, 1/3, and 1/3.) Keeping track with a computer program simplifies the task to the extent that you will find yourself automatically recording the times you spend during the day. Do not continue recording after quitting timesuch as 6 PM unless you are doing serious work. Keeping score aids self-discipline, especially for artists and other self-employed workers. It acts as a reward system for those who need or appreciate recognition for jobs well done.

The First Closure

In my childhood, I acquired new ideas, the names of things, the world. These old adventures offer closures to me now, when I explore the unknown tunnels, walls, doors, and windows behind closed eyes, through bloody shadows confronting fear, the dread emotions returning to me from that warm afternoon (or cooler morning) when it startled me to learn what was a wall. What was a wall? Along the baseboard of our dining room, the false, stone, more likely plaster, grainy surface, painted golden cream, hard, cold, I crawled along the floor, probably using the side, the edge, to prop myself against what was a wall. And when I hit the thing with the flat of my hand (unable yet to close it otherwise), it struck me back: cold, indifferent, unyielding. This obstacle had a 275

name: Wall.

Sound
You can replay the startling, random, unexpected sounds of Listening in your brain as often as you like. You can relive the moment, making yourself increasingly conscious of the sound. Sounds have textures and components, and you can amplify them. You have within yourself an automatic amplifier. This phenomenon may be repeated while listening to music. Then, instead of reproducing exactly what went before, there are constant changes, which are pleasing, in the same timbre, so that in classical music, many things can happen, each following a different memory path. The repeated differences are what make music art. Listening also includes analyzing sound into textural components, not just remembering it. The citys sounds can raise consciousness to the level of an incipient art. Sounds can retain deliciousness when you rehear them. The experience should be pleasurable.

Essays
For almost any person, including a professional writer, it would be impossible to write an essay in the morning by just sitting down to write something. But for almost anyone, after writing 300 words as notes, a theme will always emerge that will provide plenty of inspiration to write an essayproviding you know that no one else will ever have to read it; and thus, you wont feel intimidated. The day following this writing you may decide whether to copy anything written previously before you destroy your notes for the writing. You should not intend to keep your notes or essays in their raw form for long. Then youll always be convinced that, when you do Morning Preparation, what you write will be impermanent and will never be judged by anyone other than yourself.

The Hormonal Effects of Acting Well

Acting Well can accomplish much of what proponents of melatonin, testosterone, DHEA, and human growth hormone promise from their trendy anti-aging potions. Included in their claims are: increased cardiovascular capacity, skin firmness, and muscle mass; enhanced memory and sex-drive; faster healing, glowing skin, elevated mood, sharper mental acuity, 276

and the whiz-bang metabolism of an 18-year-old. Most of these goals can also be achieved from Acting Wellbut without the swollen ankles, aching joints, accelerated cancers, carpal tunnel syndrome, or heart and bone enlargements that sometimes result from daily doses of exotic hormones, enzymes, and vitamins injected, inserted, rubbed into, or ingested in pill, capsule, or powder form.

Seeing Yourself
When you close your eyes, what you see through the bloody shadows of your eyelids looks like self-consciousness itselfif selfconsciousness could look like something. Another way to put it is: when you try to see with your eyes closed you become most self-conscious. If you think, Im looking at myself you hook into whatever circuit it is that makes you feel like a separate entitywhich is yourself. That entity tends to disappear in those moments when your eyes are open, consciousness becomes tied to perception, and the sense of self may be forgotten for a while.

Self-Help
The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. To the persevering mortal, said Zoroaster, the blessed Immortals are swift. Emerson, Self-Reliance

Moreover...
Doctors who dispense medications for obesity surrender to your problems instead of solving them. Nutritionists who encourage variable menus and snacking magnify your problems instead of solving them. Physical trainers who teach you a variety of occasional exercises, instead of helping you to do a regular, daily exercise, intensify your problems instead of solving them. Becoming thin is an acting problem not a weight problem. You 277

cant be thin unless you act thin. _________________________________

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