No one keeps track of time better than Ferenc Krausz. In his lab at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, he has clocked the shortest time intervals ever observed. Krausz uses ultraviolet laser pulses to track the absurdly brief quantum leaps of electrons within atoms. The events he probes last for about 100 attoseconds, or 100 quintillionths of a second. For a little perspective, 100 attoseconds is to one second as a second is to 300 million years. But even Krausz works far from the frontier of time. There is a temporal realm called the Planck scale, where even attoseconds drag by like eons. It marks the edge of known physics, a region where distances and intervals are so short that the very concepts of time and space start to break down. Planck time—the smallest unit of time that has any physical meaning—is 10-43 second, less than a trillionth of a trillionth of an attosecond. Beyond that? Tempus incognito. At least for now.

Read the rest at Discover Magazine.

Would that thinking made it so, people sometimes wistfully say. But Christopher deCharms, the chief executive of Omneuron, a start-up in Menlo Park, Calif., believes the adage.The company he founded has created technologies that teach sufferers to think away their pain, and plans to similarly treat addiction, depression and other intractable neurological and psychological conditions.

This company is using fMRI scanners to set up a positive feed back loop so that people can learn to use their brains better. I think it would be really good to use an fMRI scanner to look at a brain undergoing NLP and EFT interventions.

Read more at the NY Times.

Scientists have induced the age-old phenomenon of out-of-body experiences in healthy volunteers for the first time.The technique, which uses a virtual-reality-style set up of cameras linked to a head-mounted video display, will help researchers understand how the brain assimilates sensory information to determine the position of its body.

Read the rest at the Guardian

Alan Watts discusses the meaning of life with a little help from the creators of South Park.

Working with minds I have to be aware of what are called cognitive biases. As humans we can’t help but distort, delete and generalise the data that we get from our senses.

A lot of people seem to aspire to a completely unbiased view on ‘reality’. I don’t think that’s realistic, so I just accept the fact that I probably have a lot of biases and choose to employ any that will give me best results.

Here’s a list of cognitive biases on Wikipedia.

My friend Magnus has made some videos to introduce you to EFT. It can seem strange and a bit New-Agey, but give it a try

Welcome to the Meme Weaver Blog, this will just be a place where I write down my random thoughts, about what’s going on in my business and post links to interesting articles and news stories.

Here’s a link to a really cool site promoting a book called Imagining the Tenth Dimension. It has an animation which takes you through the theory in a couple of minutes.

Stress Management Tips and Techniques: Changing your strategy

In my first article on stress management tips and techniques I asked you to start noticing the strategy you employ to get into that stressed state. You’re going about your business as usual and then something in your environment triggers a response in you. You might say something to yourself, see something, hear the voice of someone in your ears, or get a particular feeling in your body.

If you keep notes on these responses as they come up during your week you’ll start to become more aware of your particular way of getting stressed, your strategy. You’ll notice a pattern. Maybe you say to yourself ‘I’ll never get this done on time’ then you see a mental image of yourself working till late and then you’ll get a dizzy feeling in your head and a pain in your stomach.

Now pay attention to the particular qualities of each part of the strategy. In NLP we call these qualities the sub-modalities. For example, if you say something to yourself notice how loud the voice seems to you, where in your body does it come from, or is it outside your body? What is the pitch, tone and emotion of the voice like?

Once you know what these sub-modalities are you can change them in order to scramble the strategy. That means that in your mind, imagine changing particular qualities of each part of the strategy. For now just stick to the first part of your strategy. For example if you are telling yourself ‘I’ll never get this done’ in an angry voice, change it to a light hearted laughing voice. If it seems loud, adjust the volume, if the pitch is low, try making it sound high like a cartoon character.

Finally run through you strategy from start to finish making sure that you use the new sub-modalities. Practice this a few times. Next time you encounter a situation that brought about the old stressful response consciously choose the new strategy. Practising it enough times will make it happen automatically and you’ll find your response is a much more productive.

Stress Management Tips and Techniques: How do we do it?

In this series of articles I’m going to be showing you some stress management tips and techniques. I was inspired to do so when reading an article a Times Online Article: Coping with Stress

which says that half a million people in the UK are being made physically ill by their stress. Not a good thing.

My approach is going to be a bit different in that I’ll be helping you to use NLP techniques to manage and reduce your stress.

A lot of people will say that their workload, partner or circumstances. But if we look closely we’ll see that isn’t really the case. Does your work magically climb into your brain and trigger stressful feelings and emotions? The fact is that your response to the outside world is something you can have total control over. You might not be used to it, but it’s certainly something you can learn to do.

Back to the questions; ‘How do you make yourself stressed?’

Imagine yourself, sitting at your desk, or walking along, all of a sudden something happens and you start making that ‘stressed’ feeling in your body. What is the chain of events that leads to this happening. For example do you, say something to yourself like ‘I’ll never get it done in time’, make an image in your mind of you working till late in the evening, feel tension in your neck, shoulders and stomach.

Your task for today is just to notice what your strategy is for putting yourself in the ‘stressed’ physiology. Make a note of what you say to yourself, what you see in your minds eye and what you feel in your body. Maybe you can make these notes over the next week every time you get these feelings. Once you’re able to observe what your strategy is you’ll be able to change it.

In upcoming articles about stress management techniques I’ll explain what we can do with this information, but for now you might find that observing the strategy that you follow will already lead you to feeling more detached from the immediate emotions.