Jellyfish: Eliciting Resting Neurochemistry, Relaxation Response, Ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy

Can we also elicit resting neurochemistry, when and as we want it? We sleep for so long regularly - with the rest it brings - in spite of the possible threat of predators in ancestral environments over millions of years. It seems to be some kind of bodymind program - 8-12 hours of sleep, over tens of thousands of generations.

Enough sleep makes me feel well, and not enough, tired. Eliciting the relaxation response shows that it's possible to elicit certain kinds of neurophysiology. And the relaxation response also is restful and regenerative, but not like sleep is. How would one even begin to elicit the neurophysiology or neurochemistry of restfulness, when awake, for example, and tired, naturally?

How to begin?


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Here's an e-mail I posted to a nontheist friends' email list I participate in, about how to conceive of Quaker silent meeting, biologically and socioculturally.

Focusing on the biological and the 'sociocultural' vis-a-vis nontheist friends, I think that the relaxation response (something biological and neurophysiological) - relaxationresponse.org/steps - may well be an aspect of Quaker 'gathered meetings,' for individuals, which is then shared through language (sociocultural) during and after the rise of meeting, where people express their experiences of the 'gathered meeting.' What people share in the context of meeting may deepen, for some, such gathered meetings, which I might also call group relaxation responses (but which are not necessarily experienced by everyone). I find thinking about biological and sociocultural aspects of 'gathered meetings' vis-a-vis nontheist friends possibly logically entailed by the word 'nontheism.'

I also find gathered meetings salutary. I explore the relaxation response almost every day. :)

With friendly greetings,
Scott


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Conceiving of Ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy

An example:

An anthropology or sociology graduate student could start a Wiki {editable web pages} for the Haight Ashbury area in San Francisco, or Goa, India, for example, where anyone could add anything about, say 1967-1972 {lots of fascinating neural activity, music, ideas ...}, or whenever, and you have a new form of multi-voiced (and multi-media) ethnography. Add an on-going group building project {Wiki-world-building?} of that place in a virtual world, like Second Life, for the time period you're interested in, bring the Wiki and virtual world together and you have a new kind of group, 'textual,' ethnographic production, which, over time, lets a lot of people who live in that place, and are-were 'there' at the time, add their own experiences, ideas, viewpoints, representations and dreams. What emerges is a new form of group knowledge production, which will then get even richer as these information technologies develop, and as more technologies are engaged.

The ethnographic researcher would invite and engage people to add their knowledge, possibly over decades, and eventually through generations ahead. I'd love to get to know many of the fascinating folks in the Haight who have been there continually since the 1960s. And many of these people may have video, photos, art from this time, which they might want to share and digitize on the web in the context of this Wiki-Virtual-World ongoing Haight community, building on their connections over 40 years. The 1960s time had far-reaching effects in so many ways. :)

A new ethno-wiki-virtual-world methodology ...


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Ah, Monterey Aquarium jellyfish ...

and in warm water? :)

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