Category Archives: general

Tapping

Text: My grandma has an exercise where she taps on different parts of the face and body (as demonstrated by the picture she drew.

She says it’s sort of a three part process:

These points are meridian end points. She says that when you tap on them they stimulate these points (and your body) and your cortisol level is brought down, which you produce when you get stressed, anxious, emotional (there’s another thing it produces but she couldn’t remember). Cortisol isn’t good for your immune system, it makes it work harder.

When you tap for 5 minutes, it starts to bring it down. When you tap for more than 5 minutes, then it starts to train it to stay down a little bit further.

My grandma says in her practice (and she said there’s a lot of ways people do it) when she taps, someone might be really really, really sad or really angry. So they get to talk about it and get to bring that energy up so now they’re feeling the sadness. With that feeling you tap on all that sadness, feel it and it brings things down. You don’t have to tell your story or talk aloud, though sometimes it helps to hear it aloud. But when you tap on that sadness, what it does (and she said she was simplifying things) is it allows that frontal cortex to open up so it’s not clouded with cortisol.

Then skipping ahead she personifies it, and she talked me through personification. When you talk to your body your body feels validated, it’s saying” Oh, you hear me? I am sad. Let me tell you why I’m sad.” Even though we personify it, that energy comes up, because it’s been going around and around in you, so in your intellect you keep it there. But as your tapping what happens is, as said before, your frontal cortex opens and it starts to integrate your nervous system with your thought process.

So now you can acknowledge that sadness, honor it, but you don’t have to hang onto it. When you’re ready then you can tap and say, I choose to allow this sadness to release, or I choose to transform this sadness.

Context: My grandmother is 75, white, and living in Idaho. She works as a spiritual life coach, working to bring people’s lives into balance. She is in the herbalist community and learned a lot of what she knows through classes she took. She still operates in that community and shares knowledge with her friends. She learned this in a class around 21-22 years ago where a woman came to talk about tapping.

She says tapping is an old ancient system from a lot of places, but she’s gonna pull some Chinese traditional–and maybe five element Chinese uses it too but she’s not sure. What it is, is you tap on meridian points that come out of the chakras, which are like spinning vortexes of energy. The meridians are part of the network that carry that energy. This network is invisible, like the blood vessels in your body are part of the circulatory system, the meridians are part of that energy/chakra system in your nervous system.

Analysis: Tapping is a type of folk healing that rejects the Cartesian Dualism separation of the soul and body, instead grounding yourself and what you’re going through in both the body and the soul. It has more of a focus on the mental and spiritual aspect, in some ways leaning more towards therapy than other medical practices but still recognizes the body’s part and the importance of grounding a person through the physical tapping of the meridian endpoints. Tapping also seems to loosely act out Rappaport model of ritual referenced in “Placebo Studies and Ritual Healing”: evocation, enactment, embodiment and evaluation. Evocation: This one’s a little optional depending on if you’re leading or doing taping informally, but for my grandma’s patients starting the session and trusting her to lead them through. Enactment: The actual act of tapping, letting it bring down the cortisol levels, the five plus minute duration you tap for. Embodiment: Personifying your feelings, integrating your body and nervous system with your thought process, sometimes saying it out loud. Evaluation: Allowing your feelings to release or transform.

In this we also see what might be cultural appropriation and probably a little white washing, though folk healing is an interesting thing to examine through the lens of cultural appropriation: Is it just a recognition of systems that helps to heal thus everyone should use it? or is it people taking and reshaping (presumable) something that belongs to another culture?

Citations: Kaptchuk, Ted J. “Placebo Studies and Ritual Theory: A Comparative Analysis of Navajo, Acupuncture and Biomedical Healing.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 366, no. 1572, June 2011, pp. 1849–58. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0385.

Tomb Sweeping Day [Qingming Festival] Rituals

Age: 19

Text:

Tomb Sweeping Day, or [Qingming Festival] in Chinese, is a traditional, nation-wide festival that usually takes place in April. It is typically when we would go to sweep the tombs of our deceased ancestors and honor the family members who passed away by just cleaning their tombs, bringing food to their tombs, and sometimes burning fake money in front of their tombs.

These acts related to this traditional festival carry their own symbolic meanings. For example, burning money—typically, it will be fake paper money—is a gesture of providing basic needs in life, or ensuring the material needs, for our ancestors. We will also put food like fruits, desserts, and nuts, or anything that the deceased loved to eat, on top of their tomb. This, symbolically, allows them to enjoy the food they like to eat and enjoy the material well-being we as descendants provide for them in the afterlife. I think that through these acts of giving, or offering, of material things, we are trying to give back to our ancestors who passed away the way they took care of us before. And so our ancestors wouldn’t have to worry about not having enough food to eat or money to spend in their afterlife.

This, to me, is also a way of expressing reassurance—a way of telling them (the deceased ancestors) that we are having a good, decent, and dignified life, and we are making genuine efforts in our lives as independent and capable individuals—so here’s the proof: we are making our own money, and we are buying you food, so no need to worry about us!

Family members typically gather together to visit the tombs of their ancestors. Some families, like mine, would typically talk to our deceased loved ones in front of the tomb. We would update them about our recent lives, like our progress at school or at work, just like having an everyday chat with them when they were here, right in front of us. Finally, at the end of this tomb sweeping ritual, we express kind words and blessings to them in their own world.

Context:

The informant learned this ritual by participating in this festival every year, visiting the graves of ancestors with his family since he was a child. As time passes by, he begins to remember the important steps of this ritual, such as burning paper money and talking to the graves as if speaking to ancestors. He thinks that this festival is meaningful in the sense that it allows everyone who participates in its rituals to remember their loved ones who have passed away, and show them care.

Analysis:

Death and afterlife: The Tomb Sweeping Day (Qingming) rituals reflect the Chinese’s beliefs about death and afterlife in their culture—people believe that when someone passes, they don’t end their life entirely, and instead, they are just living in a different space and dimension, in their afterlife. This belief in “afterlife” has many cultural origins, including, possibly, Buddhism’s impact in China.
Performance: This ritual is performed by a family, with all family members, as a group. This makes tomb sweeping on Tomb Sweeping Day almost a familial thing. This reflects unity and family harmony’s importance in the Chinese culture. In addition, the performance of this ritual—showing up, bringing food, and burning money—is an act of showing respect for the deceased ones in a symbolic (not material) way. Even though the “food” and “money” cannot get to the deceased ones on a material level, on an emotional level, it is an effective way of showing love and care.

Hebrew Racing Joke

אני נהג מרוצים כי אני הנהג ואתם המרוצים

Phonetic Translation: A-nee na-HAGh me-roo-TSEEM kee A-nee ha-na-HAGh ve-a-TEM ha-me-roo-TSEEM

L: which means I’m a race car driver because I’m the driver and you’re the pleased people. It is a pun that works in Hebrew and not at all in English. I guess because race and fulfilled are the same.

Context

Both of the informant’s parents were born in Israel and they speak in Hebrew together as a family. The informant claims to have heard this joke from their Grandfather.

Analysis

As the informant pointed out, this joke is based on a play on words that calls attention to the homonym מרוצים, which means both satisfied and race. Jokes that involve a play on words are often used to communicate wit and mastery of a language. In the case of Hebrew, a language that is so uncommon, it might be even more important to be able to demonstrate such mastery.

“Striking” – Theatre Slang

Text: “To strike” or “striking”

Context: AB is a Screenwriting BFA at USC, though has a substantial background in theatre. In a theatrical context, the word “striking” means to clear something [a prop, set piece, etc] from the stage. This is often used during scene transitions within a performance, but can also be used in a rehearsal context for any physical piece that needs to be removed from the performance area.

Analysis: As someone with extensive experience in theatre, it can be interesting to realize what specific terminology isn’t widespread. These terms are so ingrained into your muscle memory when working in theatre, it’s startling to realize they’re not intuitive. Both AB and I are film majors with backgrounds in theatre–in film, “striking” means to turn a light on, which is completely removed from its usage within theatre.

Trevi Fountain

Text:

If you ever visit Trevi Fountain in Rome, toss a coin over your shoulder into the fountain. This is so fate will bring you back again.