Spirituality or Induced High?

by Renee Fleming

The word spirituality is like a bag of mixed tricks relating to the church, clergy and attachment to religious values, relating to our spirit (soul, higher self?) or relating to supernatural beings or phenomena.

One of the talked about states is Nirvana, a place of bliss transcending pain and other worldly issues. This place is highly sought after  on the physical level and much is done to obtain this. Some use breathing techniques that can bring on a "spirit state" by hyperventilation or eating of sacred mushrooms. Others engage in dancing or running past exhaustion to create an artificial high by overcharging the physical system, drugging it  or having the body make endorphins,  which is a painkiller to override the bodies natural alarm system and put people ultimately into fight or flight mode.

Naturally there are other modalities like meditation, prayer and other forms of achieving altered states. The natural "high" states are mostly obtained by inducing hormone production which can be created by the body's normal pleasure response. One of these hormones is oxytocin which is produced during the birthing process, touch, smell and physical closeness. Rhythmic stroking of the body (face, hands, and shoulders) makes a person less sensitive to pain, curious, optimistic, happier and peaceful. The importance of this has to do with non adrenaline producing hormones vs. adrenaline activating hormones, such as endorphins, cortisol or GABA, which decrease oxytocin and other positive hormone production. That is why cooperative sports are the road to a peaceful society.

Competitive sports, war, fights or watching such programs on TV or living in general stress creates hormones in our system that makes us go ballistic and many times after we "go off" we have no idea what happened to us. So when we get this, we can decide to hug and stroke each other instead of getting mad.  After that we can look at the foods we eat and what hormones they produce or what activates our adrenal glands - like caffeine. Naturally there is a lot more to this than mentioned, but it's a good start and if you are interested in further info we recommend the following book:

"Smart Moves - Why Learning is Not All in your Head"
Carla Hannaford, Ph.D.
GreatRiver Books ISBN 0-915556-37-5

This book is listed out of print by most book stores, but can be obtained thru amazon.com and the Phoenix bookstore in Columbus, Ohio