WOW...WE HAVE THE KNOW-HOW AND THE TECHNOLOGY!!! GOT TO SEE THIS!

CLICK  ON  ----  AN INGENIOUS COLLECTION BARGE      TO  SEE  THE  VIDEO

Boyan Slat Unveils the Ocean Cleanup Interceptor

Analysis by Dr. Joseph MercolaFact Checked

• November 30, 2019

STORY AT-A-GLANCE 

• Boyan Slat, a young Dutch entrepreneur and his group, The Ocean Cleanup, have invented an ingenious collection barge to clean plastic debris from our oceans
• During its test run, the collection barge collected macro and micro plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
• In October, The Ocean Cleanup unveiled a solar powered device called the Interceptor to remove plastic waste from rivers
• Of the world's 100,000 rivers, 1,000 are responsible for most plastic that reaches the oceans. Interceptors have already been deployed in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Klang, Malaysia
• The Interceptor may be the lowest cost way to remove plastic pollution and is especially cost effective in coastal countries where tourism and fisheries industries are prevalent

Boyan Slat, a young Dutch entrepreneur, and his group Ocean Cleanup have invented an ingenious collection barge to clean plastic debris from our oceans. When their barge, called System 001/B, was tested in June 2019 in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — the first plastic-ridden area Slat planned to tackle — it worked successfully.1

The patch, a trash vortex between the West Coast of North America and Japan,2 is twice the size of Texas.3 During its test run in the Garbage Patch, System 001/B captured visible pieces of plastic debris — sometimes called macroplastics — large ghost nets used with commercial fishing and even microplastics in its haul.4

On the basis of challenges discovered in its test run, The Ocean Cleanup team will begin to design an improved barge to be known as System 002. And, there is more good news about The Ocean Cleanup's efforts, detailed in the video, "Boyan Slat Unveils the Ocean Cleanup Interceptor."

In October, they rolled out an innovative and workable plan to turbocharge plastic cleanup efforts, pun intended.5 The group ascertained that about 80% of ocean plastic pollution comes from the world's rivers and they have developed a plan to target the 1,000 most plastic-polluting rivers with a new invention.6

The device, called the Interceptor, can collect 50,000 kilos (110,231 pounds) of plastic trash every day — equivalent to 1 million soda bottles, according to the featured video — and may collect up to 100,000 kg a day under perfect conditions.7 Two Interceptors have already been deployed — one in Jakarta, Indonesia, and one in Klang, Malaysia.8 Others are in the works.

Which Rivers Need To Be Targeted?

"When it rains, plastic washes from street to creek to river to ocean," Slat points out9 — a fact which seems pretty evident. But how can it be determined which specific rivers are the worst culprits and need to be targeted? After all, there are about 100,000 rivers in the world!

The Ocean Cleanup created a monitoring system that can be attached to a bridge, scanning for plastic that floats by. With the use of artificial intelligence, the system allowed The Ocean Cleanup team to automatically measure how much plastic was flowing out of a river. 

Based on that information, they were able to create an interactive global map model, the first of its kind, that ranks rivers on the basis of the amount of plastic pollution in them. 

It was soon discovered that a small fraction — only 1 percent — was causing most of the pollution, says Slat in his Interceptor presentation. If 100,000 rivers were contributing to plastic pollution, the cleanup task might be overwhelming. But since a relatively small number of rivers are responsible for most of the pollution, those 1,000 plastic-polluting rivers can be targeted with the new device.10

The Interceptor Is Accepted by Other Countries

Obviously, an ambitious plan to attack plastic river waste on an international scale needs the buy-in from world leaders as well as funding, and The Ocean Cleanup is securing both. 

Working with government leaders and private corporations, the team plans to install Interceptors in the 1,000 most-polluted rivers within the next five years.11 Those of us who are concerned about plastic pollution know that time is of the essence.

In addition to the Interceptors already installed in Malaysia and Indonesia, others are planned for the Mekong Delta in Vietnam and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.12 Thailand has also agreed to situate an Interceptor near Bangkok. 

The Ocean Cleanup has not neglected the U.S., which is clearly one of the world's major producers and disposers of plastic. It is currently in talks with officials in Los Angeles county, according to the video report. Though an Interceptor costs approximately $777,000 right now, The Ocean Cleanup predicts that costs will come down as production increases.13

The Challenge of Closing the Plastic Tap

River cleanup is crucial to solving the ocean plastic problem because removing existing plastic in the ocean is not enough, says Slat in the video.14

"To truly rid the oceans of plastic, what we need to do is two things. One, we need to clean up the legacy pollution, the stuff that has been accumulating for decades and doesn't go away by itself. But, two, we need to close the tap, which means preventing more plastic from reaching the oceans in the first place. Rivers are the arteries that carry the trash from land to sea."

The Ocean Cleanup doesn't want to be "the garbage collector of the oceans," says Slat, though it would be a "pretty sustainable business model." Rather, The Ocean Cleanup's goal "is to put ourselves out of business."15

Still, judging by current pollution data, it will be quite a while before The Ocean Cleanup runs out of plastic garbage to collect. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, a mere 9.1% of the plastic material generated in the U.S. municipal solid waste stream was recycled in 2015, and only about 30% of plastic bottles and jars were recycled.16,17 That is why The Ocean Cleanup's campaign is so important and urgent.

How Does the Interceptor Work?

According to the "Boyan Slat Unveils The Ocean Cleanup Interceptor" video, the Intercept system is anchored to the riverbed and makes use of the natural flow of the river to collect plastic debris as it floats by. 

Its barrier guides the plastic into the mouth of the Interceptor and a conveyer belt scoops the plastic out of the water. (Slat uses scores of little yellow rubber duckies in the video to demonstrate the system's effectiveness.) To prevent clogging, the belt has been made to be permeable and behind it is a flow channel that creates a suction effect.18

After the plastic has been funneled into the Intercept, the conveyer places the plastic in the "shuttle," a basket on wheels, which distributes the plastic across six dumpsters, sensing which ones are full or empty. Each dumpster can hold 50 cubic meters (1,765 cubic feet) of trash. 

When the dumpsters are full, the Interceptor signals through its internet-linked, onboard computer to local operators to bring a boat for towing the full barge so the plastic can be emptied and recycled.19 While the barge is removed from the river for emptying, the shuttle can still collect plastic, says Slat.

The Interceptor's Environmentally Sensitive Features

When you look at the Interceptor's features, it is clear The Ocean Cleanup team has thought through all the potential problems that could come from such a system including its environmental toll. 

For example, even though the Interceptor's floating barrier directs garbage into the system, it will usually only span part of the river so it will not interfere with the movement of wildlife and the safe passage of vessels. The Interceptor is able to do this because The Ocean Cleanup discovered through sensors that at certain points in many rivers, "all the plastic is flowing through this very narrow band," says Slat. 

This removes the need for the Interceptor to span the whole width of the river.20 Next, the Interceptor is powered by solar panels and onboard lithium-ion batteries that enable it to operate day and night with no human operator, and without noise or exhaust fumes.21

Finally, the nose of the Interceptor has been engineered to deflect large objects like trees that could enter the unit and harm the machinery. And, because the Interceptor is designed like a catamaran sailboat, it has a low center of gravity and is very unlikely to tip over. "It will stay upright no matter what," Slat says. 

Is the Interceptor Cost Effective?

The key metric to determine if a plastic cleanup method is practical is the cost per kilogram of plastic collected, says Slat. Because of the Interceptor's effectiveness and the fact that it is a "series produced product," it offers the lowest cost for such removal.

But there is another metric through which the Interceptor's costs should be analyzed, says Slat, and that is the cost to tourism and fisheries in coastal countries of doing nothing about plastic waste. 

Countries are "losing money every day" that they do not invest in plastic removal, he says. Dramatic before and after pictures of plastic-polluted and cleaned rivers during his presentation underscore the urgency of tackling plastic waste and the feasibility of deploying the Interceptor.

Plastic pollution take a huge toll on marine life, which often mistake the plastic bits for food. Chemicals used to make plastics disrupt hormones, embryonic development and gene expression, and are linked, in humans, to obesity, heart disease and cancer. It is estimated that humans are now eating, swallowing or breathing in about 2,000 pieces of microplastic a week, equal to the weight of one credit card.22

What Can You Do About Plastic Pollution?

While technology like the Interceptor is an encouraging step forward, each and every one of us has a responsibility and share the burden for putting an end to plastic pollution. Below is a sampling of strategies that can help:

Don't use plastic bags — use reusable bags

Make sure the items you recycle are recyclable (See this list.)

Use reusable shopping bags for groceries

Take your own leftovers container to restaurants

Bring your own mug for coffee, and bring drinking water from home in glass water bottles instead of buying bottled water

Request no plastic wrap on your newspaper and dry cleaning

Store foods in glass containers or mason jars rather than plastic containers and plastic freezer bags

Avoid disposable utensils and straws and buy foods in bulk when you can

Opt for nondisposable razors, washable feminine hygiene products for women, cloth diapers, handkerchiefs instead of paper tissues, rags in lieu of paper towels and infant toys made of wood rather than plastic

Avoid processed foods (which are stored in plastic bags with chemicals). Buy fresh produce instead, and forgo the plastic bags

+ Sources and References

YOU THINK IT SAFE TO BUILD A SNOWMAN.... BETTER THINK TWICE!!!

SENT TO ME BY A FRIEND...... GETTING TO BE SOOOO CORRECT  IN  THE  WESTERN  WORLD!!!!!

 Snow

On the news last night it was announced that some changes have been made to children’s baseball leagues!  There will no longer be Midget, Bantam or Peewee because it is biased against actual midgets!  Go figure!  There are still Boys & Girls leagues but who knows how long that will last!!!!

It had been snowing all night. So, at ......

8:00   I made a snowman.

8:10   A feminist passed by and asked me why I didn't make a snow woman.

8:15   So, I made a snow woman.

8:17   My feminist neighbour complained about the snow woman's voluptuous

          chest saying it objectified snow women everywhere.

8:20   The gay couple living nearby threw a hissy fit and moaned it could

          have been two snowmen instead.

8:22   The transgender person asked why I didn't just make one snow

          person with detachable parts.

8:25   The vegans at the end of the lane complained about the carrot nose,

          as veggies are food and not to decorate snow figures with.

8:28   I am being called a racist because the snow couple is white.

8:31   The Muslim gent across the road demands the snow woman wear a burqa.

8:40   The Police arrive saying someone has been offended.

8:42   The feminist neighbour complained again that the broomstick of

          the snow woman needs to be removed because it depicted

          women in a domestic role.

8:43   The Government equalities officer arrived and threatened me with eviction.

8:45   TV news crew from the CBC shows up. I am asked if I know

          the difference between snowmen and snow-women? I reply, "Snowballs",

          and now I am called a sexist.

9:00   I'm on the News as a suspected terrorist, racist, homophobic sensibility

          offender bent on stirring up trouble during difficult weather.

9:10   I am asked if I have any accomplices. My children are taken by social services.

9:29   Far left protesters offended by everything are marching down the street

         demanding for me to be beheaded.

Moral:

         There is no moral to this story. This is the world we live in today;

         and it's going to get worse.

 ..............................

THE WONDERS OF HEMP!

HEMP  CAN  BE  USED  FOR  MANY  MANY  THINGS.  WHEN  I  WAS  AN  ORTHOPEDIC  SHOEMAKER  AS  A  YOUNG  MAN,  THERE  IS  A  PART  OF  SHOEMAKING  THAT  USES  THREADS  OF  HEMP  PUT  TOGETHER  AND  WAXED  FOR  THE  SOWING  OF  THE  WELT  LEATHER  TO  THE  SHOE  INSOLE  AND  UPPER,  THE  LEATHER  SOLE  IS  THEN  STITCHED  TO  THE  WELT.  PROBABLY  WILL  SEE  IT  ON  THE  INTERNET  IF  YOU  TYPE  IN  "HOW  ARE  HAND  MADE  SHOES  MADE" -  Keith Hunt!

Patagonia Leads the Charge on Hemp-Based Clothing

Analysis by Dr. Joseph MercolaFact Checked

• November 23, 2019It wasn’t long ago that growing hemp in the U.S. could land you in jail on felony charges. But after decades of criminalization, hemp is once again legal thanks to the 2018 Farm Bill, and the eco-friendly outdoor apparel and gear company, Patagonia, isn’t wasting any time in perfecting it its hemp-based clothing line.

The featured film, “Misunderstood: A Brief History of Hemp in the U.S.,” produced by Patagonia Films, shows the history of hemp in America, including why and how it was demonized for so many years. The film also highlights hemp’s various uses, including as a hearty textile that’s three times more durable than cotton.1 

Patagonia has been using legally sourced hemp fiber in its clothing since 1997, blending it with other fibers such as recycled polyester, organic cotton or spandex. Its hemp is currently sourced from China, a country Patagonia says has been subsidizing hemp for generations.2

Hemp and its use dates back to the birth of America, but in China it dates back even further, where it’s said to have been used to make the world’s first rope around 2800 B.C. Hemp was also used for cigarette papers, Bible pages and military uniforms.

Today, China grows nearly half the world’s legal hemp. The majority of it is exported as a textile fiber,3 including to companies like Patagonia, which are in the business of making sustainable clothing with little-to-no environmental impact.

A Mindful Way to Clothe Yourself

Like any other plant, hemp has its limitations, but compared to other plants it has some properties that stand out, said Elizabeth Pilon-Smits, professor of biology at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, in the film.

Hemp is valued for much more than its durability. When used for clothing, hemp is lightweight, absorbent and resistant to UV rays and mold, making it the perfect material for outdoor apparel. It has antimicrobial properties, too.

As a crop, hemp grows strong and fast. It requires little water and no pesticides. In about four to five months, hemp can grow taller than a person. Cultivating hemp is also good for the environment due to its ability to remediate the soil. Hemp can remove toxic chemicals and heavy metals from the soil in just one season, making it an effective plant for environmental cleanup, and to restore degraded land.

This was proven true when scientists used hemp in the 1990s to clean the soil following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Scientists later confirmed this use when hemp was shown to successfully extract heavy metals from the soil, including lead, cadmium and nickel.4

Shishir Goenka, founder of Fusion Clothing Company, which uses hemp for clothing, told the India Economic Times:5

"Hemp is one of the most versatile and sustainable crops on the planet. It can grow at the rate of sixteen feet in as little as one hundred days. Hemp is also a very eco-friendly crop, as it requires no pesticides and needs little water, yet it renews the soil with each growth cycle. Its long roots prevent erosion and help retain topsoil and grow readily in most temperate regions."

Hemp and its many uses are nothing new. The plant was used in the U.S. dating back to the 18th century, when America’s Founding Fathers cultivated hemp for industrial use. George Washington is said to have grown more than 100 hemp plants at his home in Mount Vernon, Virginia. It was so valuable that at one point, the Farm Bureau required all farmers to grow at least a quarter of an acre of hemp, according to the featured film.

Hemp: The Miracle Plant 

In the 18th century, hemp was viewed as an important cash crop. People migrating from Europe to America traveled on ships with sails made of hemp. It was used for rope by navies around the world, and as a thick durable linen ideal for clothing and packaging heavy materials. Additionally, hemp seed oil was used in soaps, paints and varnishes.

If hemp has all these incredible uses, you might be wondering why it was banned in the U.S. for so many decades? The explanation has something to do with the fact that hemp looks nearly identical to its close cousin, cannabis. But don’t get the two confused because, unlike cannabis, hemp contains less than 0.3% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

When asked in the film how hemp is different from marijuana, Alli La Pierre, a material developer for Patagonia, explained:

“It’s not the same at all. You will not get high if you smoke hemp. The plants look and smell the same. But hemp doesn’t have the psychoactive properties that marijuana does.”

Hemp activist Craig Lee of the Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative Association explained it perfectly in the featured film when he said that while hemp and cannabis are close cousins, the difference between them is like that between popcorn and sweetcorn.

The War on Cannabis and Hemp 

The war on cannabis is well detailed in the documentary, “The Marijuana Revolution.” The film shows how marijuana was once regarded as a harmful and addictive drug used mainly among black jazz musicians and Mexican migrant workers.

Despite its controversial reputation, cannabis (similar to hemp) has a variety of benefits including medicinal properties that can be used to treat insomnia, menstrual cramps, nausea, muscle spasms and depression.

Modern research has only expanded on these health benefits, now recognizing marijuana as an effective treatment for cancer, epilepsy, Parkinson's disease and Tourette's syndrome, as well as a host of other diseases.

However, the concept of cannabis as a medicine quickly began to fade when people started using the plant as a recreational drug in the 20th century. Those frightened of marijuana began to demonize it, using provocative terms like "devil weed" and "drug addicted zombies" to deter people from smoking it.

Harry J. Anslinger, a former railroad cop and prohibition agent, was one of the first powerful voices to come out against the plant. He used fear mongering and racism to sway public opinion on cannabis, targeting minorities including African-Americans, Hispanics and Filipinos.

Anslinger described the average marijuana user as being a minority entertainer who relied on the drug to create "[s]atanic music, jazz and swing." He said the plant caused "white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."

US Government Shuts Down Hemp 

In 1936, the U.S. government funded the propaganda film "Reefer Madness," which warned that using marijuana just once could turn you into a drug-addicted zombie.

The authorities also changed the plant's name and began using the Spanish word "marijuana" in an effort to give it a negative connotation associated with Mexican migrant workers and other minorities. Shortly thereafter, the sale and use of cannabis in the U.S. was made illegal through the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.

The legislation grouped hemp with cannabis, making hemp sales heavily taxed. The financial strain caused many hemp businesses to close and the hemp industry further declined.6 The rise of other industries, including cotton, wood pulp and plastic, also contributed to this decline.

World War II brought with it a brief boost for hemp, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture encouraging U.S. farmers to grow the plant and the government offering subsidies for hemp cultivation.

About 1 million acres of hemp were planted in the U.S. during that time, and the stiff fiber was used to make parachutes, uniforms, tarps and other products useful to the war industry. "After the war ended, the government quietly shut down all the hemp processing plants and the industry faded away again," the Hemp Industry Association noted.7

The final nail in the coffin came with the passage of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which grouped hemp and marijuana together as Schedule 1 substances, a classification reserved for drugs with "high potential for abuse" and "no accepted medical use."

Three years later the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was formed to enforce the newly created drug schedules, and the fight against marijuana and hemp use began.

The Slow Progress Toward Hemp Legalization in the US

In 2013, Colorado legalized industrial hemp farming for commercial and research purposes, provided the farmers verified the THC levels and paid for a permit. In 2014, the Farm Bill also included a section that allowed hemp cultivation for select research and pilot programs, and dozens of states introduced pro-hemp legislation to follow.

By 2017, nearly 26,000 acres of hemp were being grown in 19 states.8 Still, in a major waste of taxpayer dollars, the DEA would target hemp farmers. Ministry of Hemp noted that prior to the 2018 legalization:9

"[F]armers in all these states still risk being raided by the DEA, going to prison, and losing their property because the federal policy fail[ed] to distinguish non-drug oilseed and fiber varieties of industrial hemp from the psychoactive drug varieties (i.e., 'marijuana')."

Now that hemp has been legalized, it removes restrictions for crop insurance, banking and other barriers to farmers looking for a profitable crop. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who spearheaded the bill, believes hemp could replace tobacco as a new cash crop, stating:10

"At a time when farm income is down and growers are struggling, industrial hemp is a bright spot of agriculture's future. My provision in the Farm Bill will not only legalize domestic hemp, but it will also allow state departments of agriculture to be responsible for its oversight."

The CBD Oil Craze

While hemp’s popularity as a fiber or textile is expected to rise, it’s most common use currently in the U.S. is cannabidiol (CBD) oil. CBD oil can be made from either marijuana or hemp, and it offers a host of health benefits.

The strongest research suggests that CBD oil may be effective for treating epilepsy, as it’s shown to reduce seizures, and in some cases, stop them altogether. CBD oil may also help with anxiety, insomnia, inflammation and chronic pain.11 

From the moment hemp was legalized in the Farm Bill, CBD products seemed to have hit store shelves across the U.S. almost overnight. Today, CBD products can be found in a wide variety of retailers, ranging from health and wellness retailers to grocery stores12 and even apparel and accessories retailers. The CBD oil market is projected to rise from $591 million globally in 2018 to $22 billion worldwide by 2022.13

Given that Patagonia has been using hemp since 1997, it’s no surprise that its hemp-based clothing line is an impressive one. Patagonia’s hemp collection includes items for men and women such as tanks, shorts, pants, sweatshirts, jackets, overalls and even ballcaps — all made, at least in part, from hemp.

One of the coolest parts about hemp clothing is that it’s completely biodegradable, notes the film. In other words, you can throw hemp clothing into your compost pile or even your backyard and it will biodegrade back into the earth. That said, hemp’s ability to uptake heavy metals would make me think twice about using hemp clothing in compost destined to be used in an organic garden.

For a peek inside the hemp production process, check out these impressive photos Patagonia had photographer Lloyd Belcher take of one of their supply chain sources in China.

+ Sources and References

THE RADICAL RIGHT AND THE KOCH BROTHERS

THE  BOOK  "DARK  MONEY"  IS  ABOUT  THE  KOCH  BROTHERS  AND  OTHER  BILLIONAIRES  WITH  THEM [WELL  DAVID  KOCH  DIED  AT  AGE  79]  WHO  SPEND  A  HUGE  AMOUNT  OF  THEIR  MONEY  TO  TAKE  OVER  THE  REPUBLICAN  PARTY,  AND  BRING  IN  THEIR  RADICAL  MIND  OF  THE  FAR  RIGHT,  FROM  WAY  OUT  PLANET  PLUTO  WAY,  AND  SO  MAKE  THE  USA  GOVERNMENT  IN  THEIR  RADICAL  IMAGE.  EVEN  DONALD TRUMP  THINKS  THEY  ARE  NUTS,  AND  IS  NOT  INVITED  TO  THEIR  SECRET  MEETINGS.

IF  YOU  REALLY  WANT  TO  KNOW  ABOUT  THE  SECRET  SIDE  OF  THOSE  WHO  WANT  TO  RE-VAMP  THE  "REPUBLICAN"  PARTY,  AND  ARE  CLOSE  TO  DOING  IT,  YOU  NEED  TO  READ  THE  BOOK  "DARK  MONEY"  BY  JANE  MAYER..... THE  RESEARCH  DONE  IS  MIND-BENDING---- THE "NOTES"  COVER PAGE 381 TO 425  IN  SMALL  WRITING.   

Charles Koch

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Charles de Ganahl Koch (/koʊk/; born November 1, 1935) is an American businessman, political donor and philanthropist. As of March 2019, he was ranked as the 11th-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $50.5 billion.^[2] Koch has been co-owner, chairman, and chief executive officer of Koch Industries since 1967, while his late brother David Koch served as executive vice president. Charles and David each owned 42% of the conglomerate. The brothers inherited the business from their father, Fred C. Koch, then expanded the business.^[3] Originally involved exclusively in oil refining and chemicals, Koch Industries now includes process and pollution control equipment and technologies, polymers and fibers, minerals, fertilizers, commodity trading and services, forest and consumer products, and ranching. The businesses produce a wide variety of well-known brands, such as Stainmaster carpet, the Lycra brand of spandex fiber, Quilted Northern tissue, and Dixie Cup.

Koch Industries is the second-largest privately held company by revenue in the United States according to a 2010 Forbes survey.^[4] In February 2014, Koch was ranked 9th richest person in the world by Hurun Report^[5] with an estimated net worth of $36 billion. Previously, in October 2012, he was ranked the 6th richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $34 billion—according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index^[6]—and was ranked 18th on Forbes World's Billionaires list of 2011 (and 4th on the Forbes 400), with an estimated net worth of $25 billion, deriving from his 42% stake in Koch Industries.^[7] Koch has published three books detailing his business philosophy, The Science of Success,^[8] Market Based Management,^[9] and Good Profit.^[10]

HEALING AFTER TRAUMA

Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma Analysis by Dr. Joseph MercolaFact Checked

• October 27, 2019 

Dr. James Gordon is a Harvard-educated psychiatrist who uses self-care strategies and group support to help patients heal from psychological trauma. In this interview, he shares some of those strategies, which are also detailed in his book “The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma.”

Gordon is also the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM) in Washington, D.C., and is a clinical professor at Georgetown Medical School. During his presidency, President Bill Clinton appointed Gordon chairman of the National Advisory Council to the National Institutes of Health Office of Alternative Medicine. 

“The basic idea of the book and of the work I’ve been doing now for 50 years is that all of us have the capacity to understand and help ourselves,” Gordon says. 

“We have far greater capacity than we ordinarily understand. And then when trauma comes to us … and trauma is going to come to all of us sooner or later in our lives, we can use techniques of self-care. 

We can reach out to other people. We can not only bring ourselves back into balance and enhance our resilience, but we can also use trauma as an opportunity to transform our lives as we work through the challenges that trauma brings …

In ‘The Transformation’ … I lay out a comprehensive program so that anybody … can use [it] as a guidebook and map for meeting the challenges that trauma brings; for working through them and coming out the other side and experiencing this transformation. 

It’s the same program we’ve been using at the CMBM now for almost 30 years, both here in the United States … working with veterans, working with people in cities and rural communities affected by climate-related disasters and school shootings. 

We’re also using it around the world, in countries that have been devastated by war, terrorism, poverty and ongoing violence. It’s a model that’s been tested. We’ve published a great deal of research on it. It works. Best of all, anyone can learn to use it.”

Trauma Is a Virtually Inevitable Part of Life

According to Gordon, a recent U.S. survey found 60% of U.S. adults reported being significantly abused or neglected as children. Even if you had the good fortune to grow up in a loving and supportive family, you’re still likely going to experience some form of trauma at some point.

It could be a challenging separation or divorce, a child’s illness, chronic disease or the sudden death of a loved one. An astounding percentage of women also report having been raped or abused within a primary relationship.  

“If we don’t experience trauma in our midlife, we certainly will if we live long enough to grow old,” Gordon says. “When we become frail and deal with the losses of people we love and with our own inevitable death, this understanding that trauma is a part of life is the wise teaching of religious and spiritual traditions. 

All aboriginal people all over the planet understand this. I think in the modern Western world, we’ve come up with this idea that everything should be OK all the time. 

We tend to believe there’s something really wrong if some misfortune comes to us or if we face a major challenge, and that makes it harder for us to deal with the challenges that inevitably come up.

The skills and tools I teach are ways of dealing with the trauma that comes to us and also ways of equipping ourselves to be more resilient when challenges inevitably do come.”

The Importance of Healing Childhood Trauma

In his book, Gordon addresses ACES, which is an acronym for “adverse childhood experiences.” He mentions that about a quarter of the adult population that is well-educated and financially secure report such experiences, and resolving the trauma from childhood is vital for health and well-being. 

Typically, childhood trauma leaves far deeper scars than trauma inflicted later in life. Gordon explains:

“Childhood trauma, especially when it comes from those people whom we depend on — parents or other caregivers — is often much more severe, because these are the people to whom we look for comfort and care. 

When they betray that trust, when they break that bond with us, we’re in a terrible bind because we have to keep on looking to them for care. We look to them for security. 

At the same time, they may be betraying us on a daily basis … Even if it seems rather subtle, if you feel continuing disapproval … it goes very deep into the child, and the child has a sense that, ‘I’m not worthy. Maybe I should be treated badly. Maybe I’m not important after all.’ That stays with them through adult life. 

One of the challenges and one of the issues that I address early on in ‘The Transformation’ is a need to become aware of these feelings that we carry around with us … Sometimes, for example, people will be mistrustful in their relationships as adults. They may wonder, ‘Well, why am I so mistrustful?’ They can come up with lots of reasons why. 

But at a certain point, many people have a sense that, ‘There’s something going on. Maybe it’s not the people I’m meeting right now or the people I’m relating to right now. Maybe it has something to do with what happened back then.’ 

The trauma of childhood, first of all, needs to be realized. We need to understand that it actually happened. We need to come to accept it, and then we can begin to deal with it. It’s often … a more complicated process [than] dealing with a very major traumatic event that comes to us in our adult life.” 

Healing the Trauma of War

Gordon founded CMBM in 1991. From the beginning, it was an educational organization. Initially, they trained clinicians in the U.S. on how to use techniques such as meditation, guided imagery, movement and self-expression through art and writing. 

Shortly after the Peace Accords were signed in 1996, Gordon and Dr. Susan Lord, a family physician, traveled to Bosnia to see whether their work might be useful there. Heads of public health, the head of the Islamic University, the monsignor of the Catholic Church all welcomed them.

“We realized that the trauma had set in so deeply. The trauma had disturbed just about everyone’s physiology and their psychology. 

What we saw were people in chronic fight-or-flight — anxious, agitated, drinking to subdue their symptoms — people who were withdrawn and unable to connect with each other because not only had the fight-or-flight response persisted, but they had also shut down to protect themselves (the freeze response).”

As soon as the war in Kosovo started, Gordon and Lord knew they needed to go there and start working on trauma support. “This is a lesson for anyone who is watching or listening to us: The time is to start as soon as you realize the trauma is there,” he says. Together with The Center for Mind-Body Medicine faculty, they trained 600 people in Kosovo, including all 240 who staffed the newly established community mental health system. 

“Our model became central to all of mental health in Kosovo,” Gordon says. “Kosovo is actually the first country in the world where mind-body medicine is a completely integrated part of the health care system … 

Some of the people we trained were teachers in a rural high school. They began to teach our method of self-care to high school students. Eighty percent of these students had had their homes destroyed and 20% had lost one or both parents. They were very severely traumatized kids.

The high school teachers formed small groups and taught the kids these techniques of self-care, the same ones that I present in ‘The Transformation.’ 

Eighty-five percent of the kids who began those groups with post-traumatic stress disorder, (PTSD) — qualifying for that diagnosis — no longer had it after 11 weeks and those gains held at three months’ follow-up. 

We published the research — the first randomized controlled trial of ANY intervention with war-traumatized children — in a major psychiatric journal. This is very important for many reasons. One is that the method works. The second is that you don’t need to be a psychiatrist or a psychologist to teach people these techniques … somebody who’s … learning them from [reading] ‘The Transformation’ can also get the same kind of benefits.”

Gordon was soon invited to come to Gaza by an Israeli and a Palestinian psychologist, both of whom were reporting the same thing: The trauma caused by the ongoing conflict was hurting the children, and they didn’t know what to do about it. Seventeen years later, CMBM is the only organization working on a large-scale with psychological trauma on both sides of that still very big and very painful divide. 

Hopelessness to Healing 15 Years Later — An Example

During the 2014 war that killed some 2,000 people in Gaza, including 500 children, the CMBM team fanned out and began teaching in every part of the territory. Gordon tells the story of one 9-year-old girl named Azhaar Jendia:

“In the first of a series of our groups … we ask everybody to draw three pictures … yourself … yourself with your biggest problem, [and] yourself with your problem solved. Usually, the second drawing helps people to focus on what the biggest problem is … There are so many things that are distressing. The drawing helps to focus. 

The third drawing is usually very hopeful, because it taps into our imagination to create a solution to the problem. 

In Azhaar’s second drawing, the biggest problem, she drew herself as a tiny little stick figure in the corner of the page with her mouth turned down in sadness. Occupying the page was a scene of carnage and destruction. Her home was falling down. 

Overhead, there were planes that were bombing her home. On the ground, next to her destroyed home, soaked in red blood was her dead father. Next to him were two uncles … [and] her aunt, who were also killed in the bombing …

It was very distressing to see the second drawing. But the solution she came up with in the third drawing was even more distressing. In the solution, she was lying next to her father in a coffin in the ground. When I asked her what was going on, she said, ‘I am with my father again. He is dead. There is no reason for me to be alive. I want the Israelis to kill me.’ 

Five months after the war, and other kids in the group had similar kinds of pictures. In nine sessions, once again led by a teacher, Azhaar learned the practice of self-awareness and self-care. She learned different kinds of meditation. She used mental imagery. She moved her body actively to free up the stress and the tension. 

Azhaar did written dialogues with some of the symptoms she was having. She drew a genogram, a family tree,. She imagined the sources of support from her family.

In the final, ninth group, she did some drawings again. This time, when she drew who she wanted to be, which is equivalent to the solution to her problem, she drew herself in a white coat with a stethoscope around her neck, the earpieces of the stethoscope in her ears and the resonator on the chest of a person lying on a table in front of her. 

I said, ‘What’s going on here?’ She said, ‘I am a heart doctor. This is my patient on my examining table. Since the war in 2014 here in Gaza, so many people have hurt their hearts. I am taking care of them.’ 

There were five other figures standing next to the examining table. I said, ‘And who are these, Azhaar?’ She said, ‘Oh, those are my other patients. They’re waiting for me. There are many people who need my help.’

This is a very dramatic story of a little girl. Five months after the war, the only solution to her problem, to the destruction, to the loss, was to die, to be killed.

 Coming through this group, learning how to regulate her body, regulate the fight-or-flight response with quiet meditation, how to break up fixed patterns and tension with movement, how to use imaginative techniques to come up with solutions to problems, she herself discovered a way to move forward with her life … 

This is what is possible, even for people who have been severely traumatized — not only to recover from the trauma and to build resilience, but to discover possibilities they have never even dreamed of before they were traumatized.”

The Fight-Or-Flight Response

While there are certainly other techniques for healing trauma, Gordon believes his approaches are foundational, as they help rebalance your body and nervous system. This alone can be transformative.

The basic idea is that when trauma occurs, whether the injury is to your body, mind or spirit, two basic processes are activated. The first is the fight-or-flight response, which when activated increases your heart rate and blood pressure. Blood is shunted from digestion into tensing muscles, heart and lungs. Stress hormones are produced to help you fight or run.

While crucial in acute situations of danger, the fight-or-flight response is meant to be turned on and back off quickly. As soon as you’re out of immediate danger, you’re supposed to return back to balance, feeling safe and at ease. Problems arise when we go into fight-or-flight and stay there long after a traumatic event is over. 

“Sometimes it’s because the trauma is ongoing. That’s what happens to kids who are in abusive or neglectful situations. But sometimes, we’ve experienced a traumatic event and we’re stuck in that fight-or-flight. It’s like our foot is on the accelerator and we can’t take it off. 

So, we become anxious and agitated. We have trouble sleeping, trouble concentrating. We’re impatient with other people, impatient with ourselves. Also, we’re stuck in that past. We replay the images, the images of someone abusing us, someone assaulting us or a boss treating us badly or what happened to us when we were deployed …”

The Freeze Response

The second process activated by trauma is the freeze response. Fight-or-flight is part of the sympathetic nervous system, which is one-half of the autonomic nervous system. The other half of the autonomic nervous system is the parasympathetic nervous system. 

“In general, we’re trying to mobilize the parasympathetic nervous system to balance out fight-or-flight,” Gordon explains. “But sometimes, if the situation is so overwhelming and so inescapable, we go into what is called the freeze response, which is mediated and governed by the oldest part of the parasympathetic nervous system, deep in the mid-brain. 

We just shut down; we collapse. We put out large amounts of endorphins to protect us against the pain that’s there. We distance ourselves because the trauma is so overwhelming and inescapable. We can’t do anything else except shut down our bodies and close off our minds. 

This happens, for example, to children who were abused by their parents, because the abuse is terrible and they can’t get away from it. It happens to people who were assaulted by others who are much more powerful than they are. It happens when we’re raped. It happens in a warzone when we can’t get away and we can’t fight. We’re just overpowered by the situation.” 

When these two responses — fight-or-flight and freeze — continue, they are the essence of post-traumatic stress. “One way to look at it is that post-traumatic stress keeps us chained to the past, to the traumatic events, which we keep on replaying in our body and mind,” Gordon explains. “We’re worried it will happen again.” 

The essence of healing psychological trauma is to return back into the present moment because, when traumatized, you’re chained to what happened in the past. You worry it will happen again. If you can relax and come into the present, then the trauma starts to dissipate. 

Creating a Foundation for Healing  

The first technique taught in Gordon’s program is slow, deep, “Soft Belly” breathing for eight to 10 minutes. Simply breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, keeping your belly soft and relaxed. Closing your eyes will help eliminate external stimulation. As you do this, pay attention to your breath and allow your muscles to relax. 

“This is technically a concentrative meditation,” Gordon says. “You are focusing on the breath, on the words ‘soft’ as you breathe in, and ‘belly’ as your breathe out, and on the feeling of your belly softening, relaxing. It is the antidote to the fight-or-flight response. It activates the vagus nerve, which slows heartrate, lowers blood pressure, helps us relax the big muscles, improves our digestion.

It quiets centers in the brain, like the amygdala in the emotional brain, that are responsible for fear and anger, and stimulates centers in the frontal part of our cerebral cortex that make us more self-aware, more thoughtful, more capable of decision-making, more able to be compassionate to other people and to ourselves. 

This is the place to begin. This becomes a foundation for learning all the other techniques, because if we’re in this relaxed moment-to-moment awareness, then it’s much easier to use the techniques that mobilize our imagination.

It also becomes easier to use the active, physical techniques that can break up the frozen tension that’s in our bodies. It’s important to know that, when we’re dealing with psychological trauma, we need to work with our bodies, as well as our minds and our imagination.” 

Other Self-Healing Techniques

“Shaking and Dancing” is one of these active techniques. It is technically an “expressive meditation,” designed to loosen our trauma-tensed bodies and relax and open our preoccupied minds. Here’s how you do it: Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, your knees bent, and start shaking from your feet up through your knees and hips to your shoulders, chest and head.

Continue for five to seven minutes. “Shaking begins to break up the fixed patterns that have come into our bodies when we’ve been traumatized,” Gordon explains. The physical shaking also loosens the repeating thoughts that intrude in your mind, and opens you up to emotions that have been suppressed and repressed. 

“Sometimes it’s sadness. Sometimes it’s anger. Sometimes it’s fear. Sometimes it’s laughter,” Gordon says. “We do that for five or six minutes. And then stop and stand and relax and be aware, be mindful of the breath and the body.”

After that, Gordon suggests putting on energizing music that you find uplifting, something that raises your spirits. Then allow your body to move to the music in whatever way it wants.

“’Shaking and Dancing’ breaks up patterns that come from both fight-or-flight and freezing. It allows emotions to come up. It gives us a little time for mindfulness to become aware of what came up in our body as we did the shaking. And then it gives us a chance to express ourselves in dance, to feel some freedom,” Gordon says.

These three are basic — the Soft Belly breathing, the drawings and the Shaking and Dancing. Once you’re in a state of increased equilibrium — balancing out the fight-or-flight response and bringing yourself out of the freeze response, you can use all the other techniques I teach.

These include guided imagery, written dialogues, biofeedback and autogenic training (phrases that mobilize the parasympathetic nervous system and help us rest and digest), and many others — walking, meditation, mindful eating, being in nature and with animals, laughter, gratitude, and forgiveness.

The Trauma Healing Diet 

When we’re psychologically traumatized, our GI tract, from the mouth to the anus, suffers just as much as our brain. Every aspect of digestion is significantly disrupted. We need to restore functioning. Techniques like Soft Belly, which quiet the fight-or-flight response and allow your digestion to operate more efficiently, are part of the healing process. 

“There are also many dietary changes we can make that can make a major difference in how we feel and how quickly and well we recover from trauma … If we eat a basic healthy diet and eliminate food additives and preservatives, that, in itself, is going to help your gut to heal,” Gordon says. 

“I also suggest people eliminate gluten-containing foods and stay away from milk products until their gut is restored. Trauma often opens spaces between the cells that line the small intestine and these grain and milk proteins can then enter the bloodstream and cause inflammation everywhere in our body, including our brain.

We need to supplement with probiotics. I would also add … a multivitamin, multi-mineral supplement. There’s an interesting study done in New Zealand after the earthquake there, a very good randomized controlled trial, showing that people who took a high-dose multivitamin and multi-mineral [supplement] had far fewer symptoms of psychological trauma than those who did not.”

More Information

If you or someone you know is struggling with trauma, I urge you to get Gordon’s book, “The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma,” and start working through the program. You have nothing to lose but your pain. The book will also be an invaluable resource for anyone working with traumatized individuals or patients.

“My goal with ‘The Transformation’ is to make this work available to anyone who wants to deal with the trauma that may have come to them and also to help them — to help all of us — discover our own healing path, our own path to becoming who we’re meant to be,”Gordon says.

If you want to take it to the next level and either work with a CMBM facilitator for one-on-one guidance, or if you want to become a facilitator yourself, go to CMBM.org. 

There, you’ll find a listing of practitioners trained in the CMBM model, as well as information about CMBM professional training programs, workshops, webinars, conferences and much more. To allow as many people as possible to learn these techniques, CMBM charges on a sliding scale, based on your ability to pay.

“About 40% of the people who come to our trainings here in the United States come on scholarship,” Gordon says. “We want our work to help all those who want to serve and help others to use what we have to offer. We are a community of healers and a healing community … Come and be part of our community. Our community is here to support you in your life and in your work.”