You Can Improve More Rapidly Than You Believe

In two areas, my tennis and my fiddling, I am improving surprisingly fast. This is interesting. What can I learn from the experience? If I can improve rapidly, can you do it also?

After two years of tennis I now play well enough so people on the tennis court treat me with respect - and maybe some fear. I have asked many people about their tennis experience. Here is my conclusion: nobody else does what I am doing. Playing tennis this well at my age should require that I have done it all my life. I am breaking the "rules." Here is an example of someone who plays as well as I do. She was a really fun partner last weekend: a much younger woman, age 42, who has been playing for twenty years. She played well. My serve was better than hers, and my forehand was stronger and more reliable. We both have good backhands, and she plays better close to the net. Overall, her playing was comparable to mine. However, I don't need her advantages to play this well. I learned in two years at age 68. That is breaking the "rules."

Here is a second example. I love fiddling. Generally I do it at "Jam Sessions." A jam session is an informal get-together in which amateur musicians and singers perform. Sometimes we are audience; sometimes we perform. The music is mostly American from the '30s to the '50s. I started doing this about a year ago. My previous experience on the violin was in a small band that played the old Hungarian music for dancing. I played the violin, and Elly played the bass. We did this before my crash. In those days I practiced a lot. However I put away the violin after the crash. When I picked up the violin more recently for the the jam sessions, I was totally unfamiliar with American music. Worse yet, no one brought sheet music. Therefore, if I wanted to play this music, I had to listen and improvise. So I did. Previously, as the Hungarian fiddler, I could not improvise; I could only play music written on paper. My bowing recently has become satisfyingly complex and my speed is increasing. In contrast, when I was the Hungarian fiddler, my bowing was simple, and I could not play fast. My coordination between the hand holding the bow and the hand that played the notes wasn't good enough for much complexity.

The "rules" say I must practice to improve my fiddling. That isn't happening. I only pick up the fiddle to play at the jam sessions. There is no other practice. Yet I continue to improve. I am breaking the "rules" again.

Perhaps I am not simply a fiddler or a tennis player. I am me. When a problem with tennis becomes obvious, I assume that is due to a defect. I go home and use frequencies or symbols to correct the defect. Once done, the tennis improves. So does the fiddling. The healing to improve my backhand also improves my ability to coordinate the fiddler's fingering with complex bow movements.

I can imagine the question of a skeptic: Ok, suppose I have discovered how to rebuild myself so I function better. However, playing music is based on habit. Even if I am now capable of being a better musician, the habits are not there. How do I develop the habits of the better musician without practice? Doesn't it take a lot of experience to develop a habit? Apparently not. Yes, I know it always used to - perhaps because I had defined my self in that way. However, in order to heal myself, I have created good communication within myself. The body can now notice that I have just played a complex passage. It can then ask me if I want to make that a habit. If I answer yes, my body will probably have the habit ready for me by the next day. I could never have done that ten years ago. I do it now routinely.

This is discussed in the following video. I hope it suggests new possibilities for you.

My Wife's Glaucoma: The Threat, Our Reaction, and the Happy Result

I wonder if you, the reader, are looking for real-life information that might help you resolve your own very real health problems. Perhaps these essays will help you realize cure is possible, and it doesn't have to be expensive. We have learned to trust our ability to cure ourselves. These cures have produced happy endings at low cost. That is good. What is not so good is that most of them happened several years ago. The day-by-day actions were never recorded. The first few videos in this blog are good examples: "Look what I did!"

In contrast, this post is about a very real, frightening threat to my wife's vision. If you were hoping for information about how we handle a present-day problem, this is the post for you.

Some hints of problems with my wife Elly's eyes turned nasty. Over the past 3 months, Elly has been reporting discharges from her left eye with increasing frequency. Sometimes they were like crystals. They were always present when she got out of bed in the morning. They seemed to be getting worse. At the same time, she has been increasingly reporting discomfort while reading. This is new for her - and bad. Elly loves to read. The problem has resulted in errors in her bookkeeping. For the first time, it is apparent that she cannot reliably read the numbers on the computer screen. I increased the font size on her computer. She appreciated that. However, this, again indicates deterioration in her vision. On July 3, the problem became urgent: she reported pain in that eye, and we decided she had glaucoma. The next video will introduce the situation. It will also explain our immediate response.



Today is about a month later. I am very grateful. The pain in my wife's eye is gone, and she is happily reading again. We both like the large print on her computer. Maybe I will give in and enlarge the print on my own. Hmm. That's like giving in... The next video explains where we are now. I regard this problem as basically cured. That said, we are investigating herbs. We are also both using spices several times a day. Here is a list:

ground cloves,
garam masala,
cinnamon,
roasted sesame seeds,
ginger,
cardamom,
anise seed,
mace,
nutmeg,
allspice and
kelp flakes.



I am satisfied the problem with Elly's eyes is solved. Right now, Elly is reading a biography of George Soros. She is enjoying it so much, she won't even look at this post!

Let me write about the spices. We eat them. Therefore they obviously act inside the gut. However, it is naive to assume they act only within the gut. The communities of organisms within the gut are in constant communication with related communities elsewhere in the body. The gut is not isolated from the rest of you. Perhaps the communities within the gut simply reflect the many related communities in many parts of the body.

We received the suggestion to use spices from an old friend, whom we have helped. She called a few days after the glaucoma became obvious. We decided her call was not an accident, and we listened. This, however, leads to a question: how did she know to call? Who told her? I explore this question in the following video.



I am writing this paragraph in mid August. By now the spices have done their jobs. I say that because the woozy feelings, strange intestinal problems, and requests to eat these spices are now seldom happening. We use our own personal strength tests to ask whether a particular spice is a good idea. Elly uses a pendulum, and I test the strength of various fingers and arms. I like to use several strength tests, just in case one disagrees with all the others. I find that, even though one might be wrong, it is quickly overruled by the others if I test several. In this way I am satisfied I get a consensus that represents the desires of my body.

I cannot say I understand the complexity of this event. Fortunately, I do not have to. When reconciling our checking account, we noticed some odd errors Elly made during the time the glaucoma was getting bad. These errors suggest she couldn't think clearly. It wasn't just that she couldn't see well. Something was wrong with her thinking also. It is also clear that since then, she thinks more clearly. She is the one who noticed this so I feel free to tell you about it; it is not just gossip. Since this is true, it is clear that attempts to solve this problem by dealing only with the eye could not succeed completely. The problem was bigger than that.

At this point the pain from the glaucoma has been gone more than a month, so we are convinced that pressure in her eye is no longer a problem. As a result of the glaucoma, Elly has realized that certain environments consistently lead to watery discharges from her eyes. Until we had cleaned ourselves up with the spices, the watering happened in too many places to understand. Since she cleaned herself up with the spices, three environments stand out. Caffeine produced it. Therefore we have withdrawn from both coffee and tea. I have given up my beloved chocolate. Boy, did that produce withdrawal symptoms! Second, Elly realizes that her eyes produce discharge where she must breathe the cigarette smoke produced by others. She has never smoked. As a result, she will give up certain social gatherings. Finally, there are certain grocery stores where her eyes water. Other stores are no problem. We will avoid the ones where her eyes water. I presume they use some sort of aerosol that irritates the eyes. Finally, it is clear these situations have always been problems, not only for her, but for me also. Her ability to diagnose the problems is a gift to both of us. I am grateful her glaucoma happened. We are both better off as a result. Does that sound odd?

The following video provides more detail.



I discussed this with Elly, and thanked her for being the canary who alerted us to these issues. I decided I was going to call her my canary. She said, in that case, she would call me Sylvester the cat. Maybe I want to rethink this position...