Skip to main content

Summary:  Learn why survival of the fittest is a myth, and experience Jin Shin Jytusu FINGER HOLDS for emotion regulation to support your own evolution.

 

Topics:

  • [00:00] Introduction 
  • [00:29] Survival of the Fittest is a Myth 
  • [09:25] Symbiosis
  • [13:23] Introduction to Jin Shin Jyutsu FINGER HOLDS
  • [15:20] The Motion – FINGER HOLDS
  • [18:34] When to use the FINGER HOLDS
  • [19:25] Recap

 

Links:

Visit here for your free gift

Visit Move Into Coherence for more information

Check out the Move Into Coherence YouTube channel

 

Transcript: 

[00:00] Introduction

Hello, friends. And welcome to Move Into Coherence. I’m your host Pamela Stokes. In today’s episode we will be busting the myth about evolution being based on competition and survival of the fittest, and we’ll experience a motion that will help move difficult emotions through and out. So let’s begin.

 

[00:29] Survival of the Fittest is a Myth

Hello, my friends. Pamela here. Thanks for joining me. In today’s episode we’re continuing with Season Two’s “Mythbusters” episodes, and in this episode, we’re going to bust the myth that evolution comes about by the concept of survival of the fittest. And I’m here to tell you, as a person who studied biology—I have a degree in biology—that I was a big supporter of this myth. In my own teachings, the things that I learned in school, it made perfect sense that of course this is what is causing evolution. And I have now come to realize, after much study, and there’s new information that has come to light as well:  when I went to university, the information that we had was limited. At that point in time, we didn’t even really know that the brain is plastic, that we can change our own brain and how we think and how we feel based on the neuroplasticity of the brain. We also didn’t understand that the genes in the DNA, the genes being part of that, we didn’t understand that those genes were influenced by the environment. And this isn’t just the environment that is outside of us, but more importantly the inner environment. And we call this field now epigenetics. With this new information, the fact that we can change our own brains, that we can use this process of neuroplasticity and make new neural pathways, I have adjusted the way that I think about evolution. With the information about epigenetics and knowing that the environment of the DNA determines whether or not those particular genes are expressed, in other words, proteins are being made. The other piece that I feel is important to mention in busting this myth that it’s about survival of the fittest and competition, is if we look at the history of our planet’s life, for billions of years there wasn’t any life until a very small, very important creature—this one-celled creature, cyanobacteria—these one-celleld creatures are able to (they still exist) but these were the first life forms on planet Earth. These could exist by absorbing the light from the sun and using photosynthesis were able to make their own food and thereby supplying their own energy. This is what resulted in the production of oxygen primarily, along with explosions volcanoes and so forth to release oxygen into the air, which then in turn resulted in the possibility for more life forms. Now, if we were based upon the concept of competition, we could conclude that that would be the end of it. We’d have one-celled organisms and that’s it because everyone would be competing against each other and the strongest would survive. However, what ended up happening is those one-celled organisms joined forces and we ended up creating multi-cellular life. Now if there’s competition, how does one explain multi-cellular life? These cells from different organisms and different types of finding food and surviving and thriving getting together and creating something completely different, wouldn’t be possible. I also want to remind you that in our body we have trillions of cells. I’ve heard numbers anywhere from 40 trillion up to about 70 trillion cells (not sure why the number is so variable) but in any case, many trillions of cells are bodies made of. In addition, there are microorganisms that are very important. In fact, if we didn’t have them, we wouldn’t thrive. And these microorganisms outnumber us by many fold. So with that, again it does not support this idea of competition and survival of the fittest, because if those cells were in there trying to be the fittest and the most surviving, we wouldn’t exist. And if our cells were doing the same thing and trying to be the most fit, the bacterial cells wouldn’t exist. They wouldn’t be able to. In all of this new information:  the concepts that I’ve mentioned before of neuroplasticity; the fact that we can actually change the way our nervous system functions and the way our brain works by influencing it using the things, the tools that we’ve been learning in this show. Things like motions and allowing emotion to move through us, and feeling sensations of body, and listening to the body. All of those things create new neural pathways, so we are influencing the way that our brain functions. We’re also influencing the way we respond to life. If we have a stressor that would normally cause an activated response, a sympathetic response, instead by managing our emotions and allowing these things to move through us, we now have the possibility for there to be ease and comfort instead of reactivity—reducing the stress in our body and allowing the natural process of homeostasis to occur. Homeostasis is our body’s ability to maintain optimal wellbeing. We can support that we can influence that. We can influence that by affecting the way we think. So this is a very new way of thinking. We’re busting this myth. Evolution and survival of the fittest—busted. This is about a new way of looking at life, more holistic. We’re all together. We’re all working as a system, not only within our own bodies, but between each other. And if we can look at it in this way, we will have a more able species, because we are social and collaboration is the way that that works. And we’ve seen it evidenced by this process of going from unicellular life or one-celled life to multi-cellular life and symbiosis as well. 

 

[09:25] Symbiosis

There’s a couple of cool examples of symbiosis that have just inspired me and filled me with awe. One of them is the creature that makes up coral reefs—coral. The organism itself is very small and when many of them come together, it creates a colony. The colony not only has the properties of animals, like movement, but also the property of plants, which produces food from sunlight. So this combination and the colonial formation of these organisms, make these vast reefs, which provide food and shelter for fishes and other creatures. So this is an obvious example of this is not about survival of the fittest, this is about collaboration. Not competition but working together for survival and for thriving. And another example, and this is even more amazing to me, that they have found (and I mean by “they” I mean some scientists who are studying these organisms) they have found a beetle that exists in I believe New Guinea. It may be Australia, but maybe both places. And this beetle has a shell on its back like most beetles do. It’s called the carapace, which is mainly made of protein. But it’s a covering over the wings. And this particular beetle doesn’t fly, it crawls around on the ground. But what’s amazing is that some of the cells in the carapace, in the shell on the back of the beetle, are plant cells. They can photosynthesize. So these beetles, while they have mouthparts and they can eat food, they can also, because of these photosynthetic cells on their back, they can also make their own food from sunlight. Pretty amazing! This is allowing these beetles to live very long lives. Normally, insects don’t live very long, maybe a year or two. Some species live much longer. There are some that live maybe seven years and 17 years and things like that, but these beetles have been found to live 100 years because of this ability to create their own food from sunlight. It’s pretty fascinating, and it reinforces this concept of it’s not about survival of the fittest, it’s about collaboration, and symbiosis, and working together. There are many examples. In essence, what I’m saying is, we have the possibility of evolving ourselves using various tools that you’re learning here in this show, Move Into Coherence. And by changing the internal environment, by making the environment hospitable, pleasant, easy to be in, we’re giving signals through our nervous system that all is well and life can flourish in these states. So it’s up to us to help ourselves evolve. 

 

[13:23] Intro to Finger Holds

And I thought it would be nice to introduce to you today a practice from an area that is called an art more than a science, but it involves using the acupoints. And we’ve talked about acupoints before many times now. And you can find out more through the different episodes of this show. The one most recently from last week on I Am Not Enough, where we used some of the acupoints to do an EFT tapping script. And we also used it in Venting Is No Good, which allows us to calm down if we have anger. This activity today comes from Jin Shin Jyutsu, which is an art of using these acupoints on our body. And these acupoints are on the hand. And I’ll show you and describe for you how to do this. It’s very simple. Each of the fingers has acupoints on it and these are related to different emotional states. The thumb is related to worry or anxiety; the index finger is related to fear; the middle finger is related to anger; the ring finger is related to grief; and the pinky is related to this feeling of not-enough-ness or not being authentic to oneself—self-esteem. We also have a place in the middle of the palm for despondency, so in the center of the palm.

 

[15:20] The Motion

So let’s begin. Using your thumb first, make a tube with the other hand with your fingers and thumb making a circle, and then place that tube around your thumb. Hold it gently and take two full breaths, breathing in through the nose, and out, and again, in and out. And that one is for worry or anxiety. And then moving on to the index finger, wrap your tube around your index finger, and again we’ll take two full breaths here. Inhale and exhale, inhale, exhale. And then we’ll move on to the middle finger, which is related to anger, the emotion of anger. So again making that tube and wrapping it around your middle finger and two full breaths here. Inhale and exhale. And again, inhale and exhale. And then we’ll move down one finger to the ring finger, which is for grief and we’ll take two full breaths here. Inhale, exhale. Inhale and exhale. And then the pinky. Again this is for self-esteem or being authentic. And we’ll take two full breaths here. Inhale, exhale. Inhale and exhale. And then in the center of the palm, we have an acupoint here for the emotion of despondency, which is basically kind of giving up. And so you can place your thumb on the center of your palm and just relax your hands. And again we’ll take two full breaths. Inhale through the nose and exhale. Inhale and exhale. And then you can relax your hands. 

 

[18:34] When to use the motion

What has been shown is that it’s most effective if you do this more than one time. Over time there will be an ease in these different emotional states. And what might be helpful for you is to bring something up, or if you happen to be in a situation that brings that emotion up for you, that’s ideal to go ahead and hold one of these fingers that relates to that emotion. And/or you could bring something to mind that would represent the situation that would make that emotion happen. So bringing up something that makes you feel angry and then you could work with the middle finger or bringing up something that makes you feel fear and using the index finger.

 

[19:25] Recap

So to recap what we’ve learned today is that the idea/ the concept of survival of the fittest and competition is how we get through and how we evolve, busted. Myth busted. Not true. Evolution is based upon collaboration. It’s based upon awareness of the self. It’s based upon being able to regulate one’s emotions so that you create the internal environment for our cells to express the genes and to create the proteins that we need that are beneficial to us. And when we are in these happy, easy emotional states, our cells, the DNA, gets expressed that represents proteins that do things like prevent cancer, and prevent stress, prevent tumors from forming, things like that—really important things. So by influencing our own emotions, we can influence our own DNA expression, thereby evolving ourselves and making it happen in easy ways. And, again, as a social species, we are wired to work together and to support each other. That’s not survival of the fittest. That is not competitive. That’s collaborative. So I wish you well as you move forward in your new mindset, that this isn’t about fighting to the death to win the race. This is about working together to make this aneasy way to do life so that we can all thrive. Thank you so much for joining me today and send yourself some appreciation for joining in. This has been Move Into Coherence. You can find out more at MoveIntoResilience.com I’m Pamela Stokes. Take it easy.

Leave a Reply