I believe that there a decent probability that Thomas Hanna’s thesis that sensor-motor amnesia (SMA) is causing 50% of all aging effects is true and SMA is neglegted by SENS.
I think SMA is a big deal, but not that big a deal. If there was one thing that had a huge effect on aging which was somewhat under people’s control (mood, SMA, diet), there’d be a lot more very long lived people.
F.M. Alexander lived to be 86.
Moshe Feldenkrais lived to be 80.
Chen Man Ching, 72.
Ueshiba (founder of aikido), 86
I haven’t kept numbers, but the people who get eulogies in Tai Chi Magazine seem to mostly live into their late eighties.
I see two factors pushing in opposite directions—one is that people are apt to do things to improve SMA because they have physical problems. On the other hand, people who can do what it takes to get famous at this sort of thing may need to be reasonably healthy in later life.
I think maintaining/improving quality of movement helps a lot with quality of life, but it seems unlikely to me that it adds more than 5 or 10 years. Or is that much life extension equivalent to eliminating 50% of aging effects?
I think maintaining/improving quality of movement helps a lot with quality of life, but it seems unlikely to me that it adds more than 5 or 10 years.
Basically that’s double to three times the effect size of curing cancer. I haven’t done the math in detail but I think it might cut the chance of dying in the next year by half when you are 80.
I think SMA is even more of a deal for healthy years of life than it’s for total years of life. I’m around people who are more physically flexible in their late 50′s than they were when they were ten years ago.
If you look at an issue like heart problems due to high blood pressure that looks to me and Hanna like a SMA problem. There are muscles that tense up and increase blood pressure. If those muscles would relax than the blood pressure would be lower.
That doesn’t mean that the average Tai Chi master is skilled enough to resolve those issues. Tai Chi isn’t bad but it’s not a framework that’s optimized by scientific research to solve all SMA issues.
Last week I got two of my wisdom teeth drawn. Those at the top. I got local anesthitia for the actual drawing but afterwards took care of the wounds with body work and hypnosis.
Later that day I went to a party with my NLP friends.
While hugging a friend said: “Your heart rate seems pretty high.” I answered “Yes, I got my wisdom teeth drawn today.” He told my I look good for that because there was no swelling. He told me that after he got his wisdom teeth drawn he cold the area to prevent swelling.
Cooling to prevent swelling would be the standard way things are done in society. I think there a good chance that leaves unresolved trauma and a bit of SMA.
Then I spoke to a friend who used no anesthetia at all for getting his wisdom teeth drawn. He prepared himself beforehand. When he sat at the chair of the dentist he told the dentist that today, they are doing it without anesthesia. After a bit of shock the dentist agreed. The dentist put the pliers on a teeth of my friend. My friend thought, crap, I thought I would have a bit more time to switch off the sensation in that area. But fortunately he was fast enough and he felt no pain during the procedure. When the teeth was finally out it felt really great to him.
On the other hand when the teeth got out for me I didn’t really feel it going out. There was no great feeling involved because everything was numb.
My friend did nothing further with the wound after the process was over. There was no swelling. I would guess that the process also left no trauma that induced SMA in him.
Why do I believe that a normal person might get a bit of SMA from having their wisdom teeth drawn? The fact that the body is perfectly capable of handling the situation without swelling when properly dealing with the information send by the nerves in the region suggests to me that the typical process is far from optimal.
I personally had a ward on my fingers a while ago. I killed it with a cooling stick. When activated the stick cools down to be very cold (maybe −50C or something like that) and that get’s hold against the ward to kill it. It was a very specific sensation that I don’t think I felt anywhere else in my life.
A year later when I was releasing physical trauma’s in my body I felt that sensation again in that finger. The trauma was still there and had to be released. Without release there’s likely a bit SMA.
Is there currently scientific way to detect that ward cooling based SMA? No, there isn’t. As a result an old person will get SMA from various medical intervention and that SMA will kill them sooner or later. If you look at the average 70 year old you see how the are full of SMA and tense up a lot of muscles that don’t have to be tensed up.
Would standard Tai Chi be enough to release the ward-cooling based SMA? I dunno. I don’t have much Tai Chi experience but I’m not confident that it will given that I observe people who regularly practice Tai Chi for decades that are full of SMA as seen by the fact that they tense up a lot of muscles that don’t have to be tensed up.
Thanks. So you’re talking about SMA work which is much better than is commonly used. I wasn’t just talking about average tai chi practitioners—Cheng Man Ching is a big name in tai chi history, and anyone who gets a eulogy in Tai Chi Magazine is at least well above average.
Secrets of the Pelvis for Martial Arts might be an effort at serious SMA removal. It’s by an engineer, and he goes very deep into the subject, including a look at the emotional difficulties.
I believe you about accumulated SMA from a big range of traumas, including smallish ones-- (I even suspect that diapers cause SMA), and I’m able to manage tinnitus with relaxation. There’s a huge amount of possibility. Have you heard of Eric Franklin? He’s a dancer and anatomist, and does a lot with imagery.
We had a conversation at a Danis Bois Method / Perceptive Pedagogy class to that effect and it was true for the teacher and the other person in the room with a decade exposure.
Both of those people earn their living with working with clients, so counting money and time isn’t trival.
The teacher has I think twelve years in the method and was previously teacher yoga and before that a dancer. Yoga didn’t do the same thing for her that she’s now getting.
I unfortunately don’t have data about people who do it for a decade at that age who aren’t working professionally with it.
It would not surprise the hell out of me if there were ordinary scientific methods like checking the amount of blood-circulation in different parts of the body that could identify SMA, it’s just that no one is looking.
My notion that serious work on SMA would add 5-10 years of life is just a wild-assed guess.
For what it’s worth about Hanna’s theory about lowering blood pressure, I did have a massage session (somatic experience practionerer, eclectic massage approach which includes working with various body systems) which gave me a moment of feeling that my heart had more room. I didn’t check my blood pressure, though.
There’s research which shows that even modest amounts of tai chi practice makes old people less likely to fall, but I don’t know how much that would add to lifespan.
I can believe that people do tai chi for years and still have a lot of tension—if you aren’t ambitious about making your tai chi better, it’s not going to get a lot better.
My notion that serious work on SMA would add 5-10 years of life is just a wild-assed guess.
In general making estimates like that isn’t easy.
From my perspective there are two points to be made: 1) The average person who wants to life a long term would profit from doing some form of somatics. I think you are right that it’s likely less than a decade of additional life years for the average person with current systems. 2) Even if we solve all those issues that SENS plans to solve people will still die due to SMA. SMA happens to be neglegted in popular antiaging discussion even when it’s an important part. As a result it doesn’t get the scientific researcht that it needs.
I believe that there a decent probability that Thomas Hanna’s thesis that sensor-motor amnesia (SMA) is causing 50% of all aging effects is true and SMA is neglegted by SENS.
What’s Hanna’s line of thought?
I think SMA is a big deal, but not that big a deal. If there was one thing that had a huge effect on aging which was somewhat under people’s control (mood, SMA, diet), there’d be a lot more very long lived people.
F.M. Alexander lived to be 86.
Moshe Feldenkrais lived to be 80.
Chen Man Ching, 72.
Ueshiba (founder of aikido), 86
I haven’t kept numbers, but the people who get eulogies in Tai Chi Magazine seem to mostly live into their late eighties.
I see two factors pushing in opposite directions—one is that people are apt to do things to improve SMA because they have physical problems. On the other hand, people who can do what it takes to get famous at this sort of thing may need to be reasonably healthy in later life.
I think maintaining/improving quality of movement helps a lot with quality of life, but it seems unlikely to me that it adds more than 5 or 10 years. Or is that much life extension equivalent to eliminating 50% of aging effects?
Basically that’s double to three times the effect size of curing cancer. I haven’t done the math in detail but I think it might cut the chance of dying in the next year by half when you are 80.
I think SMA is even more of a deal for healthy years of life than it’s for total years of life. I’m around people who are more physically flexible in their late 50′s than they were when they were ten years ago.
If you look at an issue like heart problems due to high blood pressure that looks to me and Hanna like a SMA problem. There are muscles that tense up and increase blood pressure. If those muscles would relax than the blood pressure would be lower. That doesn’t mean that the average Tai Chi master is skilled enough to resolve those issues. Tai Chi isn’t bad but it’s not a framework that’s optimized by scientific research to solve all SMA issues.
Last week I got two of my wisdom teeth drawn. Those at the top. I got local anesthitia for the actual drawing but afterwards took care of the wounds with body work and hypnosis. Later that day I went to a party with my NLP friends.
While hugging a friend said: “Your heart rate seems pretty high.” I answered “Yes, I got my wisdom teeth drawn today.” He told my I look good for that because there was no swelling. He told me that after he got his wisdom teeth drawn he cold the area to prevent swelling. Cooling to prevent swelling would be the standard way things are done in society. I think there a good chance that leaves unresolved trauma and a bit of SMA.
Then I spoke to a friend who used no anesthetia at all for getting his wisdom teeth drawn. He prepared himself beforehand. When he sat at the chair of the dentist he told the dentist that today, they are doing it without anesthesia. After a bit of shock the dentist agreed. The dentist put the pliers on a teeth of my friend. My friend thought, crap, I thought I would have a bit more time to switch off the sensation in that area. But fortunately he was fast enough and he felt no pain during the procedure. When the teeth was finally out it felt really great to him.
On the other hand when the teeth got out for me I didn’t really feel it going out. There was no great feeling involved because everything was numb. My friend did nothing further with the wound after the process was over. There was no swelling. I would guess that the process also left no trauma that induced SMA in him.
Why do I believe that a normal person might get a bit of SMA from having their wisdom teeth drawn? The fact that the body is perfectly capable of handling the situation without swelling when properly dealing with the information send by the nerves in the region suggests to me that the typical process is far from optimal.
I personally had a ward on my fingers a while ago. I killed it with a cooling stick. When activated the stick cools down to be very cold (maybe −50C or something like that) and that get’s hold against the ward to kill it. It was a very specific sensation that I don’t think I felt anywhere else in my life. A year later when I was releasing physical trauma’s in my body I felt that sensation again in that finger. The trauma was still there and had to be released. Without release there’s likely a bit SMA.
Is there currently scientific way to detect that ward cooling based SMA? No, there isn’t. As a result an old person will get SMA from various medical intervention and that SMA will kill them sooner or later. If you look at the average 70 year old you see how the are full of SMA and tense up a lot of muscles that don’t have to be tensed up.
Would standard Tai Chi be enough to release the ward-cooling based SMA? I dunno. I don’t have much Tai Chi experience but I’m not confident that it will given that I observe people who regularly practice Tai Chi for decades that are full of SMA as seen by the fact that they tense up a lot of muscles that don’t have to be tensed up.
Thanks. So you’re talking about SMA work which is much better than is commonly used. I wasn’t just talking about average tai chi practitioners—Cheng Man Ching is a big name in tai chi history, and anyone who gets a eulogy in Tai Chi Magazine is at least well above average.
Secrets of the Pelvis for Martial Arts might be an effort at serious SMA removal. It’s by an engineer, and he goes very deep into the subject, including a look at the emotional difficulties.
I believe you about accumulated SMA from a big range of traumas, including smallish ones-- (I even suspect that diapers cause SMA), and I’m able to manage tinnitus with relaxation. There’s a huge amount of possibility. Have you heard of Eric Franklin? He’s a dancer and anatomist, and does a lot with imagery.
I googled his name to find his cause of death and there seem to be rumors that he got poisoned.
What are they studying? How much time/money are they putting into it?
We had a conversation at a Danis Bois Method / Perceptive Pedagogy class to that effect and it was true for the teacher and the other person in the room with a decade exposure.
Both of those people earn their living with working with clients, so counting money and time isn’t trival. The teacher has I think twelve years in the method and was previously teacher yoga and before that a dancer. Yoga didn’t do the same thing for her that she’s now getting.
I unfortunately don’t have data about people who do it for a decade at that age who aren’t working professionally with it.
I’m guessing you mean “wart”, not ward.
It would not surprise the hell out of me if there were ordinary scientific methods like checking the amount of blood-circulation in different parts of the body that could identify SMA, it’s just that no one is looking.
My notion that serious work on SMA would add 5-10 years of life is just a wild-assed guess.
For what it’s worth about Hanna’s theory about lowering blood pressure, I did have a massage session (somatic experience practionerer, eclectic massage approach which includes working with various body systems) which gave me a moment of feeling that my heart had more room. I didn’t check my blood pressure, though.
There’s research which shows that even modest amounts of tai chi practice makes old people less likely to fall, but I don’t know how much that would add to lifespan.
I can believe that people do tai chi for years and still have a lot of tension—if you aren’t ambitious about making your tai chi better, it’s not going to get a lot better.
Yes.
In general making estimates like that isn’t easy.
From my perspective there are two points to be made:
1) The average person who wants to life a long term would profit from doing some form of somatics. I think you are right that it’s likely less than a decade of additional life years for the average person with current systems.
2) Even if we solve all those issues that SENS plans to solve people will still die due to SMA. SMA happens to be neglegted in popular antiaging discussion even when it’s an important part. As a result it doesn’t get the scientific researcht that it needs.