Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager. Robert,
Speaker 1: what is the worst pain you have ever felt? Oh,
Speaker 1: this is a good question. Um, well, this is a
Speaker 1: tough one, you know, because I'm pretty lucky in that
Speaker 1: I haven't had any major injuries thus far, any major,
Speaker 1: major lye painful life experiences. Um. I guess the the
Speaker 1: one moment that comes to mind the most just when
Speaker 1: I had an ingrown toenail. Okay, this is years and
Speaker 1: years ago, and I tried to address it myself with
Speaker 1: some sort of which I do not advise anyone to do,
Speaker 1: with some sort of bathroom surgery and imagining you with
Speaker 1: like a bowie knife in the bathroom, basically like tweezers
Speaker 1: and whatnot. And I should not have been doing this,
Speaker 1: but there was a moment there where I almost blacked out.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, And you know, this is just a tonnail.
Speaker 1: But I guess everything is just so um you know
Speaker 1: tight in their yeah, the the nerve endings at all,
Speaker 1: but that that stands out as a moment of rather
Speaker 1: intense pain. But it was just such a fleeting moment too.
Speaker 1: There was no it was immediately back out of it.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, flying and then dipping down into
Speaker 1: a canyon and then saying, oh, that's a little bit
Speaker 1: too much and then coming back out. See the fact
Speaker 1: that it's your toneail is interesting to me because today's
Speaker 1: topic is connected to something I think about a lot
Speaker 1: when I watched action movies, which is like, inevitably somebody's
Speaker 1: getting tortured, and in the back of my head, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of like, how would I do in these scenarios?
Speaker 1: And I think I could probably deal with a fingernail
Speaker 1: getting ripped out, But I don't know. When you say that,
Speaker 1: it makes me think like they're so tied in to
Speaker 1: your nervous system that that's just something I don't have
Speaker 1: any qualification of understanding for. You know, well, it's those
Speaker 1: all pains we can certainly understand a little a little better.
Speaker 1: You know, when we're watching a movie, if we have
Speaker 1: a character that gets their arm blown off, most of
Speaker 1: us have no frame of reference for that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But if the character breaks a finger, or their fingernail rips,
Speaker 1: or there's a there's a moment in raising Arizona where
Speaker 1: it is a fight between John Goodman's character Nicholas Cage's
Speaker 1: character and one goes to do a double axe handle
Speaker 1: on the other and they scraped their knuckles across the
Speaker 1: ceiling of the the popcorn ceiling of the trailer, and like,
Speaker 1: that's a moment where we can feel it because yeah,
Speaker 1: because we can relate, we can maybe have not helped
Speaker 1: that exact sensation, but we we have a better idea
Speaker 1: of what that consists. Off. Yeah, I'm like you in
Speaker 1: that I am lucky knock on wood that I have
Speaker 1: not had any you know, I've never broken any bones
Speaker 1: to my knowledge. I've had major surgery once and I
Speaker 1: was pretty well under with anesthetic. But the worst I
Speaker 1: can think of, like when when somebody first asks me this,
Speaker 1: I always think of um sometimes. So I have two
Speaker 1: different types of contact solution. One is just like your
Speaker 1: daily cleaning solution is one. One is the overnight storage
Speaker 1: and it's got some kind of acidic thing in it
Speaker 1: that you're not supposed to put directly in your eye,
Speaker 1: and I maybe once a year make the mistake of
Speaker 1: accidentally putting it in my eye and it burns so bad,
Speaker 1: it really hurts but every time I do it, I
Speaker 1: start thinking like God, this is this is super painful,
Speaker 1: but it starts leaning into a point of not pleasure,
Speaker 1: but just sort of meditative transcendence of like everything just
Speaker 1: evens out and the pain is still there, but I
Speaker 1: but I'm just kind of it's flatline isn't the right word,
Speaker 1: but you know what I mean, Like it's just everything else,
Speaker 1: all other senses sort of level out all of a
Speaker 1: sudden and there's no longer like any kind of overstimulation
Speaker 1: and it's just the pain. And there's something kind of
Speaker 1: nice about that. Well, this reminds me a lot of
Speaker 1: doing yoga and what I sometimes think about like young
Speaker 1: really and literally fit people who are doing yoga. I
Speaker 1: kind of want to say, look, if you if you
Speaker 1: don't have injuries, if you don't have soreness, then you
Speaker 1: can't get how much can you possibly be getting out
Speaker 1: of this? Because for me, like sometimes it's working with
Speaker 1: a part of your body that's sore where you get
Speaker 1: into these um these sensations that are difficult to categorize.
Speaker 1: Like a few years back, I had to some risk
Speaker 1: injury minor risk injury, but it made it difficult to
Speaker 1: put a lot of direct pressure down, but there were
Speaker 1: some poses where I'm like where I'm bending my risk
Speaker 1: in the other way and putting like subtle pressure there,
Speaker 1: and the resulting sensation was it was difficult to categorize
Speaker 1: because it certainly it wasn't really pleasurable, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: pain either. It was it was a very soothing, you know,
Speaker 1: sense of relief that I felt, and I and it
Speaker 1: and it was in somewhere in that gray area betwixt
Speaker 1: the I knew this woman once who was she was
Speaker 1: in my yoga class, but she was also some day
Speaker 1: I knew outside of yoga who was nine months pregnant,
Speaker 1: and she was like really good at yoga, and she
Speaker 1: got into scorpion pose like a week before she gave
Speaker 1: birth to her daughter, and I was just like a
Speaker 1: completely stunned, like like not only like what must that
Speaker 1: feel like, because you know, you're you're carrying this extra weight,
Speaker 1: it's a completely different body dimension, but also just like
Speaker 1: the discipline that she must have in her yoga practice
Speaker 1: to be able to pull that off. Oh man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: scorpion is a tough one. Super I can't do scorpion,
Speaker 1: And yeah, I've never been par oh and by the way,
Speaker 1: I don't mightn't mean to imply that young fit people
Speaker 1: can't get something out of yoga. Everybody can get something
Speaker 1: out of yoga. But I'm just saying if you have
Speaker 1: if you have an injury or a soreness, depending on
Speaker 1: the degree of the injury, UH, yoga can open up
Speaker 1: sort of new pathwayte of understanding what do Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: here's a if you're young and fit and you're not
Speaker 1: getting anything out of yoga, maybe you should consider body suspension.
Speaker 1: Y Yeah, move on up to the next level. That's
Speaker 1: what our topic is today. This is why we're talking
Speaker 1: about pain and pleasure at the top is that we've
Speaker 1: actually had I think multiple listeners right into us because
Speaker 1: we've just sort of brought it up casually in the past,
Speaker 1: the idea of body suspension, and we've had people send
Speaker 1: us photos and write to us about their experiences with it,
Speaker 1: and we decided, you know what, let's take a deep
Speaker 1: look at like how this works. There's there is a
Speaker 1: lot of science behind it, a lot of math. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's certainly physics and UH and in medicine that are
Speaker 1: involved in approaching it. And then in terms of understanding
Speaker 1: what's happening with pain and interpreting the sensations that are
Speaker 1: going on. There's of course a lot of research into
Speaker 1: just the human experience totally. Yeah. Now, a number of
Speaker 1: you may remember from our Listener mail episode we heard
Speaker 1: from a listener by the name of Ainsley and she
Speaker 1: wrote in and she shared her own experience with the
Speaker 1: with hook suspension, and she says, quote, I fell in love.
Speaker 1: I was allowed to feel and bleed and openly respect
Speaker 1: the process of each It was a whole new world
Speaker 1: for me. Suspension became my life. And when I read
Speaker 1: those words, it made me think back to a book
Speaker 1: that I read a while back titled The Body and
Speaker 1: Pain by E. Laine Scary, and it's a This is
Speaker 1: a one of these deep, deep considerations of the idea
Speaker 1: of pain, not only in terms of just physical experience,
Speaker 1: but what it means philosophically and politically socially. Um. It
Speaker 1: is a it is a deep read, but but one
Speaker 1: of the things that she talks about in it, so
Speaker 1: I pret pretty much. Her main statement in the book
Speaker 1: is that an individual's physical pain has no voice, but
Speaker 1: when it finds a voice, it begins to tell a story,
Speaker 1: a story of of of the vast distances between your
Speaker 1: experience of pain and my own. Uh. She even describes
Speaker 1: this distance as being interstellar, like, that's the that's the
Speaker 1: space between my understanding of pain and another person's experience
Speaker 1: of pain. This is a really good example of how
Speaker 1: lonely humanity can be in a way, and that like
Speaker 1: there's no way for us to possibly understand what another
Speaker 1: person's level of pain is. Yeah, the either the limits
Speaker 1: or at least the challenges of of human empathy, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, we have the complications
Speaker 1: that are inherent in that distance, our an ability to
Speaker 1: to understand each other's pains, and in the very nature
Speaker 1: of human creation. So she ties all of that up.
Speaker 1: And of course authors and artists often cite pain is
Speaker 1: a necessary part of creation, some more than others. But
Speaker 1: you know, it makes it makes you think, you know,
Speaker 1: if we're if we're pretty much okay with that idea
Speaker 1: that that that out of pain, out of personal suffering,
Speaker 1: we can create these these great things. And how how
Speaker 1: weird is it really for someone to engage in some
Speaker 1: careful manipulation of pain sensation. Yeah, I've I've got to say,
Speaker 1: like this is something like I'm constantly coming to terms
Speaker 1: within the real life. Is that like things that I
Speaker 1: think of as being like not normal but not being abnormal,
Speaker 1: like body suspension. I'm constantly surprised when other people around
Speaker 1: me are like, whoa, that's so weird, or what is
Speaker 1: wrong with you? Or that kind of thing. Not that
Speaker 1: I've done body suspension, and I'm not particularly into body
Speaker 1: modification in any way, but I understand it, like I
Speaker 1: I can identify with what people seem to be getting
Speaker 1: out of this experience. It's I think, in a similar way,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought up yoga, like it's similar to
Speaker 1: what I've gotten out of yoga before. But it's also like, um,
Speaker 1: you and I have talked about sensory deprivation tanks on
Speaker 1: the show before. I can imagine that they're similar experiences.
Speaker 1: It's just that the pain part isn't there. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and it's certainly not for everyone, to say the least,
Speaker 1: there's very much in an outsider enterprise. But but of
Speaker 1: course here's the thing. It's it's still something that emerges
Speaker 1: from the human experience and merges in and at least
Speaker 1: a few different human cultures. So it's worth exploring. Like
Speaker 1: we can't just it's it's easy to look at it,
Speaker 1: and especially if you look at say a media representation
Speaker 1: of it, be it you know, dateline denied or whatever,
Speaker 1: or or the cell. The cell is the go to
Speaker 1: I mean the minute, Uh, anybody brings this up, I
Speaker 1: always think of Vincent din Afrio in The Cell. And
Speaker 1: it's really, especially after doing the research, I think it's
Speaker 1: like a kind of horrible negative depiction of this process.
Speaker 1: And probably I would imagine people in this suspension community
Speaker 1: probably don't feel great about how they're portrayed in that movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he's a he's a serial killer character in it,
Speaker 1: and he's you know, he's using it to sort of
Speaker 1: hurt himself while hurting others, and he only does it
Speaker 1: to himself by himself. Yeah, Whereas in as we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss, actual hook suspensions tend to be more of
Speaker 1: a like a seemingly communal experience where they're the people
Speaker 1: facilitating the suspension and those observing it. And you see
Speaker 1: that not only in sort of the the modern primitive
Speaker 1: industrial uh you know, subculture of hook suspension, but even
Speaker 1: some of the traditional users of hook suspension that will
Speaker 1: discuss as well from from Native American and uh In
Speaker 1: Indian traditions. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean this goes back a
Speaker 1: long ways, like five thousand years. But still it's difficult
Speaker 1: for I think most people to get past the idea
Speaker 1: that this is somebody that is intentionally suffering, intentionally doing
Speaker 1: harm to their body and it and we just we
Speaker 1: we tend to just say, oh well then just must
Speaker 1: be a complete whackadoodle and you just put up this wall.
Speaker 1: I'm not getting like, I'm just like walls up, shields up.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to attempt to interact with that or
Speaker 1: empathize with that in any other form. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: like I guess because of like the people that I've
Speaker 1: spent time with that things like other body modification practices
Speaker 1: like tattooing, piercing, even scarification or or gauging like seem
Speaker 1: like totally normal things that like people in my everyday
Speaker 1: life have gone through. So it's like, what is the
Speaker 1: line that is drawn where you go like, well, tattooing
Speaker 1: is totally normal and that's okay, but putting hooks through
Speaker 1: yourself and suspending is not. You know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like I see that there's different levels again, like there's
Speaker 1: variations and pain thresholds too. But like, I get it.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not in any rush to go hook
Speaker 1: myself up and do it. Um. But I but I
Speaker 1: feel like I understand. Why don't we actually give the
Speaker 1: audience like a very basic definition of what we mean
Speaker 1: when we say body suspension. So this is a form
Speaker 1: of body modification that involves hanging the human body by
Speaker 1: hooks that are attached to ropes. So I think a
Speaker 1: lot of us have various ideas of what it means
Speaker 1: that we're going to go through it into deeper detail. Um.
Speaker 1: The other form of body modification that I that I
Speaker 1: am unfamiliar with that we've talked about here at How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works before. I don't think we've done a show
Speaker 1: on it is subdermal implantation. Uh. And that's something I'm
Speaker 1: also really interested in. We have a pretty good article
Speaker 1: with some excellent infographics on subdermal implantation on the site. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I may have done something. I think I've touched on
Speaker 1: it a little bit on the blogs before. Some forms
Speaker 1: of subdermal implants um, notably I think the bagel head things,
Speaker 1: which ultimately was not a very big thing at all. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what if it's sailing and the forehead and then sort
Speaker 1: of make an intention that was kind of like a bagel,
Speaker 1: but it was this was hard. It was hardly a trend.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of an interesting study in what happens
Speaker 1: when a few people do something that is kind of
Speaker 1: weird or rather weird, and then it gets blown out
Speaker 1: of proportion by the media. Right, It's not like the
Speaker 1: people who give themselves like horns. Yeah, but it's also
Speaker 1: worth noting again that you know, what's normal within one
Speaker 1: community is not normal in another, and even major supporters
Speaker 1: of suspension, such as suspension artist Alan Faulkner, he points out, quote,
Speaker 1: hanging from hooks is hardly seen as a normal activity.
Speaker 1: That's from an artical eroded safe piercing dot org. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's like any like really niche thing
Speaker 1: one maybe into you know, you admit that it's not
Speaker 1: the mainstream thing, and you really you don't want it
Speaker 1: to be the mainstream thing. I haven't seen anybody that
Speaker 1: engages in in hook suspension that's saying, hey, we really
Speaker 1: need to get this everybody. You know, we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: doing this in public schools. Yeah, nobody's making that argument.
Speaker 1: Everyone is seems to be rather cool with the fact
Speaker 1: that this is a very specialist interest. But at one time,
Speaker 1: for some cultures, it was I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to say normal, but it was a part of
Speaker 1: their ritualistic behavior. So let's take a look at the
Speaker 1: history of it for a minute. And we're going to
Speaker 1: start in North America. Actually, uh, I don't think we
Speaker 1: have records of how far back this practice goes in
Speaker 1: North America. But this is the O keepaw hooks suspension ceremony, right,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a much larger ceremony than just the
Speaker 1: hook suspension. Yeah. And and before we get into that,
Speaker 1: I do want to also point out that pain, of course,
Speaker 1: is a very normal, everyday aspect of human lives. And
Speaker 1: so you see uh, rituals of pain and just about
Speaker 1: every culture, and then that includes Christian culture, Islamic culture,
Speaker 1: Hindu culture, pretty much anywhere you go, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: some sort of right of passage, some sort of of
Speaker 1: of self inflicting um ritual that pops up as at
Speaker 1: some point or another. Yeah, maybe we should do an
Speaker 1: episode on self flagellation at something. Yeah, that's it's a
Speaker 1: fascinating topic onto itself. But here in in North America, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had the the Okipa hook suspension ceremony, and this
Speaker 1: was practiced by the North what's now North Dakotan uh
Speaker 1: Mandan tribe. So it was a ride of passage and
Speaker 1: the ceremony saw hook suspended warriors twist and swing until
Speaker 1: the inner ed a transcendent state. And for you, film
Speaker 1: buffs out there. Uh. The nineteen seventy film starring Richard Harris,
Speaker 1: A man called Horse, depicted the right in a rather
Speaker 1: memorable scene. I remember seeing the scene, or at least
Speaker 1: a trailer for it on like KBS or something back
Speaker 1: in the day, and it really confused me. I had
Speaker 1: no idea what was going on. I thought, Oh, they're
Speaker 1: torturing that guy. That's horrible what they're doing to him.
Speaker 1: But I had no idea. I've never seen this movie,
Speaker 1: but I am picturing older Richard Harris. I'm picturing like
Speaker 1: Dumbledore Richard Harris instead of you know, I imagine in
Speaker 1: the seventies he was probably what like a man in
Speaker 1: his forties or something like that. He was I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what his age was, but he was definitely like
Speaker 1: leathery but still handsome Richard Harris. Yeah, well, this particular ceremony,
Speaker 1: as I said, it's a four day ceremony, and suspension
Speaker 1: is just one part of it. They also have a
Speaker 1: long vigil, there's dancing, and then trials of endurance, of
Speaker 1: which the suspension is part of it. So what they
Speaker 1: would do is they suspend young warriors from the roof
Speaker 1: of the tribe's lodge by ropes that were attached to
Speaker 1: skewers in their chest, back or shoulders. And sometimes they
Speaker 1: would add weights as well that were attached to their
Speaker 1: legs to increase the pain. Now here's the thing in
Speaker 1: this culture, if you cried out in pain, you were
Speaker 1: considered cowardly. So the ceremony itself didn't end until they
Speaker 1: were lowered, and then they had their left pinky finger
Speaker 1: removed with a hatchet, and then there was a run
Speaker 1: around the village with the skewers and weights all still
Speaker 1: in place. Uh. This was first documented by white men
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty five by a guy named George Catlin,
Speaker 1: and he was a painter apparently, I think he was
Speaker 1: just like visiting this community. He witnessed it and then
Speaker 1: brought it back. The last ceremony of this nature. Well,
Speaker 1: the public I think that took place was in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine. And and in public again is as an
Speaker 1: or at least semi public. Is the is an important
Speaker 1: thing to drive home because again these are communal experiences. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not just somebody hanging alone in a tent. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're being suspended as part of this right. And as
Speaker 1: we'll find out later, the modern suspension practice has its
Speaker 1: roots in the Okipa ceremony. Now, if we travel all
Speaker 1: the way around the world, we get to Hinduism and
Speaker 1: at least two additional suspension rights. Uh, probably more, I think,
Speaker 1: as we'll discussed. But just to drive the nail into
Speaker 1: a couple of them. Here, there's no Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: there's Shahrak Puja. This is a Hindu folk festival in
Speaker 1: southern Bangladesh. And here the faithful believe that the festival
Speaker 1: will satisfy Lord Shiva and generate prosperity through the elimination
Speaker 1: of the previous year's sorrows and sufferings. You know. So
Speaker 1: there's a catharsis here. So sometimes a human Shahrak as
Speaker 1: they're called, takes part in the festivities, tied with a
Speaker 1: hook on his back and then moved around a bar
Speaker 1: with a long rope. And then we have Sri Lanka's
Speaker 1: vel Hinduism festival named for the divine javelin val of
Speaker 1: the war god Morrigan, also known as uh Kardi Kaya,
Speaker 1: and this entails public suspension as well as with so
Speaker 1: many religious rites of pain, including those in Christianity and flatullation, etcetera. Uh,
Speaker 1: these traditions seem rooted in religious penance and the expression
Speaker 1: of devotion. Yeah. So, as I said earlier, this practice
Speaker 1: has been going on for five thousand years. So if
Speaker 1: you look at body suspension today and you go oh weird,
Speaker 1: you know, you think about the larger human experience. This
Speaker 1: has been going on for a long time, large far
Speaker 1: longer than many of us can imagine. Back to UH,
Speaker 1: there's also the Hindu festival of Tai Posam that still
Speaker 1: happens in Southeast Asia. And one of our listeners actually
Speaker 1: wrote into us about this a year and a half ago,
Speaker 1: maybe for a Listener Male episode. We talked about it
Speaker 1: and he sent us pictures of it. Um he was living.
Speaker 1: I think he was an expatriate in Singapore, as many
Speaker 1: of our listeners know. I went to high school in Singapore,
Speaker 1: and UH was totally unaware of this ceremony, so when
Speaker 1: he sent us the pictures, it was really interesting. And UH,
Speaker 1: one of our colleagues, Ramsey and coincidentally went to the
Speaker 1: same high school in Singapore, and I was talking to
Speaker 1: him about this, and he went several times with his
Speaker 1: family to the Tai Pusan festival, so he was able
Speaker 1: to tell me a little bit more about this. I
Speaker 1: guess the basic idea here is similar to some of
Speaker 1: the ones that you just mentioned. Uh. It's a practice
Speaker 1: called vel cavati where worshippers undergo what's sort of referred
Speaker 1: to as a debt bondage to Murragon, that same war
Speaker 1: god and val is the again the divine javelin that's
Speaker 1: used as a weapon against against the against evil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so these skewers are representative of the spear or javelin
Speaker 1: that Povarty gave Murragon to kill the demon Sura pad
Speaker 1: Um Uh. And so what happens is actually during this festival,
Speaker 1: the worshippers are sometimes suspended in the air with the
Speaker 1: levels of pains correlating to their actual devotion, you know, Um,
Speaker 1: and it's not My understanding is it's not like what
Speaker 1: we think of his body suspension and that it's vertical.
Speaker 1: I think they're that. I think from the pictures we
Speaker 1: were shown, starts off on the ground and they're lifted
Speaker 1: up by people horizontal to them. Yeah, I believe that
Speaker 1: sounds right. Yeah, those of you out there who have
Speaker 1: maybe partaken in this and seen it, let us know
Speaker 1: in looking at any of these religious or semi religious
Speaker 1: modes of of hook suspension. It's it. It reminds me
Speaker 1: again of Scary's writings which she talks about pain becoming
Speaker 1: a sort of proof, an argument that the quote act
Speaker 1: of wounding is explicitly presented as a sign the human
Speaker 1: body is in each the site for the analogical verification
Speaker 1: of the existence and authority of God. And of course,
Speaker 1: a modern suspension is often a secular affair, rooted in
Speaker 1: traditions of personal exploration and performance art. But you still
Speaker 1: see some aspects of this, this idea that that the
Speaker 1: pain is there as a as a proof of something.
Speaker 1: You know, why don't we take a quick break and
Speaker 1: when we get back, we're going to get into the
Speaker 1: modern suspension practices and how it's done. Thank, okay, we're back,
Speaker 1: So One of the big sources that we use for
Speaker 1: this episode was a fantastic article written for The Atlantic
Speaker 1: called the Therapeutic Experience of being Suspended by your Skin.
Speaker 1: And this is by a guy named Wyatt Marshall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a great article. Will include a link to
Speaker 1: it on the landing page for this episode. It's stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind dot com. Um. He goes through
Speaker 1: a lot of what we're gonna be talking about here,
Speaker 1: and he points out that the modern suspension movement traces
Speaker 1: back to the nineteen sixties when a man by the
Speaker 1: name of Fakir Mussafar who's born Roland Loomis, reintroduced and
Speaker 1: adapted various forms of suspension and coined the term modern primitives,
Speaker 1: and in his wake suspension enthusis is such as Mussafar,
Speaker 1: protege Alan Faulkner, who already quoted, and performance artist Steelark,
Speaker 1: who've talked about on the show before. They've continued and
Speaker 1: others have continued to advance the culture and the public
Speaker 1: understanding of this these of these sort of rights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this isn't necessarily religious today, but people do see
Speaker 1: it as a spiritual experience or as a way to
Speaker 1: test themselves. Now. Fakir Mussafar was born on an Indian
Speaker 1: reservation in South Dakota, and then he developed forms of
Speaker 1: modern suspension based on kapa. He performed one of these
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three. So so for instance, you know,
Speaker 1: we read earlier that the last time this was was
Speaker 1: performed was in the like late nineteenth century. I don't
Speaker 1: think he did the full four day ceremony. I think
Speaker 1: he just died the suspension part and he saw it
Speaker 1: as being about self expression or spiritual exploration. And you know,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned that, Alan Faulkner goes on and sort
Speaker 1: of brings it out to the world at law Arge.
Speaker 1: So Faulkner actually I read up on him. He's a
Speaker 1: laser technician from Dallas, uh and he has a tattoo
Speaker 1: removal shop. And so he met Musa far when he
Speaker 1: dropped out of school and moved to California and he
Speaker 1: tried to do his first suspension with a fishing line
Speaker 1: and it ripped. So I think, like you know, they
Speaker 1: eventually take on the practices the knowledge of the Ukapa ceremony,
Speaker 1: which involves math and physics in one way or another,
Speaker 1: figuring out you know what weight will bear on a
Speaker 1: particular pulley or rope things like that. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: of course you have where to connect them on the body.
Speaker 1: How you're their additional concerns to come into into play
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, I mean, if this isn't obvious, I
Speaker 1: think we should put a disclaimer out there, like, don't
Speaker 1: just go do this to yourself, Like you want to
Speaker 1: sit down with experts for a lot of reasons that
Speaker 1: we'll talk about, but you don't want to just put
Speaker 1: fishing line in your skin and hang yourself up from something. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm also a little confused about Musafar's origins story. I
Speaker 1: could not, for the life of me, find more about him.
Speaker 1: It sounds like he was not Native American, but he
Speaker 1: was born on this reservation and learned about the practice
Speaker 1: and then appropriated it. So I'm kind of curious how
Speaker 1: these local tribes feel about modern body suspension culture. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear more about that. He of course,
Speaker 1: is it's still alive as of this recording. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of people that do suspension too. That's
Speaker 1: another thing I think we should put out there to
Speaker 1: sort of dispel the idea that this is just like
Speaker 1: circus performers or something right like lawyers, wrestlers, doctors, acrobats
Speaker 1: and even politicians have done this. Now, I mentioned Steve
Speaker 1: Lark already, the Australian performance artists, and he's usualized suspension
Speaker 1: at several different points and and continues to do so
Speaker 1: in his exploration of sort of the trans humanist body
Speaker 1: and the ide of our body beyond our body via technology. Uh.
Speaker 1: And some pret actitioners also take hook suspension in a
Speaker 1: more industrial or even erotic direction. And I think all
Speaker 1: this is quite understandable as well. After all, pain and
Speaker 1: pleasure are more closely linked than we typically realize in
Speaker 1: modern hook suspension, you know, to think industrially, it's a
Speaker 1: union not of human and God, but of human and
Speaker 1: medical slash industrial paraphernalia. Yeah, and all of this is
Speaker 1: connected to previous episodes that Robert and I have done
Speaker 1: about cyborgism, and we did an episode about body modification
Speaker 1: engineering as well, and steel Ark came up in there.
Speaker 1: I actually read an article for this episode that was
Speaker 1: all about steel Arcs just sort of general project, and
Speaker 1: showed that he really uses the suspension thing as a
Speaker 1: way to highlight his other experiments like for instance, when
Speaker 1: he put the ear on his armed ear, like the
Speaker 1: suspension was a way to get people to like sit
Speaker 1: and look at that ear for a long period of
Speaker 1: time rather than just like you know, sit around and
Speaker 1: do a photo shoot or something like that. And of
Speaker 1: course he's done some other interesting perform and start bits
Speaker 1: with like a mechanical arms, mechanical and want to say,
Speaker 1: spider legs, uh, fascinating body of work. So there are
Speaker 1: different types of suspension positions too. That's one thing you
Speaker 1: should know if you're if you're thinking about this or
Speaker 1: you're interested in it. Hooks when they're inserted into the
Speaker 1: upper back, this is known as suicide suspension because it
Speaker 1: looks like you you've hanged yourself. There's also a pose
Speaker 1: called the Superman suspension, which is what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: It it looks like you're hanging in the air as
Speaker 1: if you're flying Superman style. Um. Now, Dallas, Texas has
Speaker 1: an annual body suspension convention called Suscon that was founded
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one, and this is because Alan
Speaker 1: Faulkner is from Dallas. There's apparently also one that's in Oslo.
Speaker 1: I was also running across pictures from one in Medadine, Columbia. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: uh And now Faulkner himself, and as we'll get into
Speaker 1: when we're sort of going through this, describes even a
Speaker 1: small suspension practice requires a crew of like two to
Speaker 1: six people. So en don't buy the whole, you know,
Speaker 1: if you've seen the cell, don't buy that like one person.
Speaker 1: I guess they could, but that's not usually how this
Speaker 1: is done. Like there, in fact, like doing it with
Speaker 1: a community of people seems to be part of the
Speaker 1: transcended experience. Yeah, I mean, in a sense, it has
Speaker 1: to be witnessed to take place. So let's get into
Speaker 1: the safety a little bit. Is it safe? Now? Now
Speaker 1: I realize safe and safety? And it might seem weird
Speaker 1: to talk about this in light of putting hooks in
Speaker 1: your back and hanging from from the ceiling. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you know we're talking about something that's intrinsically endorphin releasing.
Speaker 1: But safety is a prime concern for modern enthusiasts. After all,
Speaker 1: It's it's one thing to to pierce the skin and
Speaker 1: hanging from specially prepared to hooks quite another to suffer
Speaker 1: tearing or a fall. Yeah. So the basic idea here
Speaker 1: at least as it was portrayed by one of the
Speaker 1: I guess experts in this in that Atlantic article was
Speaker 1: that there's two aspects for planning. There's there's medical aspect
Speaker 1: and there's a rigging aspect. Now, the medical aspect has
Speaker 1: to do with the insertion of the hooks, cleaning them,
Speaker 1: the blood that comes out, cleaning up that blood, and
Speaker 1: then of course maintaining the skin. Rigging, Uh, they use
Speaker 1: methods that are borrowed from construction, rock climbing and stage rigs.
Speaker 1: For example, you need to know what a ceiling is
Speaker 1: made of before you rig something up, and what's above
Speaker 1: that ceiling because you need to know how much stress
Speaker 1: is already being placed upon that single fracture point. And
Speaker 1: also to easily hoist a human body, you have to
Speaker 1: make use of the mechanical advantage that you get through
Speaker 1: pulley systems. Right. So there's a certain amount of engineering
Speaker 1: that's required here. Uh. And like we said earlier, math
Speaker 1: and physics. Although the guy in that Atlantic article was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I basically do all the math in my head. That
Speaker 1: scared me a little. Now in that article by Whyatt Marshall, Uh,
Speaker 1: he talks to a pair of physicians, and they testify
Speaker 1: to an important basic fact of human anatomy here, and
Speaker 1: one that I think comes up when when any of
Speaker 1: us look at hook suspension, especially in light of say
Speaker 1: the hell Raiser movies, where the Silent Hill movies, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, both of which I can think of moments
Speaker 1: where an individual skin skin is cleanly ripped off and
Speaker 1: like the blinking of an eye, and in a reality
Speaker 1: outside of the Hell Raiser in Silent Hill universe is,
Speaker 1: unless they're shared universe, maybe they are some Hollywood executive
Speaker 1: just heard that it is like running to the bank. Well,
Speaker 1: in reality, our hides are incredibly durable. Uh. If skin
Speaker 1: tearing begins to occur, it's a gradual process and quote
Speaker 1: almost never the sort of dramatic freefall that someone watching
Speaker 1: a suspension for the first time might imagine. So it's infection,
Speaker 1: not accidental flaying that poses the greatest health risk. And
Speaker 1: that's where the importance of sterilized hooks, needles, and gods
Speaker 1: comes into play. And of course, to your point on
Speaker 1: rigging though, that, if course, is another huge area of
Speaker 1: concern and and and generally so much care is put
Speaker 1: into that that it's not going to be an issue.
Speaker 1: But obviously if you're thirty ft fifty feet off of
Speaker 1: the ground, off of a concrete floor, the potential for
Speaker 1: injury there is great if care it's not taken in
Speaker 1: the rigging which you did read about an example of that.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, people don't just rip and
Speaker 1: free fall in these things. Uh. It may look like
Speaker 1: it's about to rip, but like Robert said, skin is
Speaker 1: pretty strong. Think of leather, you know, and and all
Speaker 1: the products that we use leather in and the amount
Speaker 1: of tension that it can sustain. So there's an aspect
Speaker 1: of physics to where you place the hooks and how
Speaker 1: big the actual hooks are to this whole practice, as
Speaker 1: much as there is with rigging. Now tearing is actually
Speaker 1: more likely on your knees and on your chest, but
Speaker 1: usually there's more than enough time to begin lowering a
Speaker 1: person if tearing starts to happen, like the crew of
Speaker 1: people will start seeing it before it just rips, and
Speaker 1: they will say, hey, you know, it looks like you're
Speaker 1: starting to rip a little bit here. Do you want
Speaker 1: me to lower you or do you want to keep going? Uh.
Speaker 1: Now falls are usually do actually to improper insertion of hooks.
Speaker 1: And any high degree of motion that happens when you're
Speaker 1: up there. So it's not necessarily about the skin as
Speaker 1: much as it is about again the science the physics
Speaker 1: of where things are placed and how you're moving. Many
Speaker 1: of the people who offer this service to they seem
Speaker 1: to be trained in medical emergencies and first aid care.
Speaker 1: A lot of the people that were interviewed for that
Speaker 1: Atlantic piece where like nurses or paramedics. Uh, and they
Speaker 1: will consult your doctor if you have a medical condition
Speaker 1: that you're concerned about before doing this. Like Robert said,
Speaker 1: infection is a huge risk as well, but also nerve
Speaker 1: and tendon damage tend to be things that can happen
Speaker 1: if you have improper hook placement. So again, hook placement
Speaker 1: is huge on this. It's not like you just take
Speaker 1: a hook and just put it anywhere you please, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also read that while scarring, you know, inevitable is
Speaker 1: going to occur to some um some level, it's not
Speaker 1: quite as bad as one might expect expect, you know,
Speaker 1: but yeah, they were talking about um one of the
Speaker 1: guys had a tattoo and there was like a little
Speaker 1: bit of white flesh where where he had been scarred.
Speaker 1: From doing it previously, But the writer said I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have noticed otherwise if he hadn't pointed it out to me.
Speaker 1: There's also something and I could not find a lot
Speaker 1: more about this, called suspension shock syndrome. And this apparently
Speaker 1: happens if you hang vertically for too long. So I
Speaker 1: guess that's if you're in the suicide suspension pose. Um,
Speaker 1: there's there's something related to that that I guess put
Speaker 1: your body into shock. Okay, like blood flow? I think probably. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now there's a there's another article out there. There's pretty
Speaker 1: good two Guardian article titled body suspension Why would anyone
Speaker 1: hang from hooks for fun? Uh? The article is better
Speaker 1: than the headline on that one, but it provides an
Speaker 1: even handed discussion of the health issues involved in health
Speaker 1: concerns and in the article Emergency Medical Technicians, Scott Dubor
Speaker 1: points out that hook suspension is not something that you
Speaker 1: have a lot of medical journal articles about, you know,
Speaker 1: it hasn't received that much serious attention in these circles.
Speaker 1: Uh So, so we don't have like perfect data on
Speaker 1: on how to handle all of this. But he says
Speaker 1: that again, experienced practitioners taken individual's health history, you know,
Speaker 1: very seriously when considering a suspension event, I can see
Speaker 1: why it's not right, Like, especially in the world of
Speaker 1: publisher perish, if you're sending out articles to peer reviewed journals,
Speaker 1: they might frown at something that's about body suspension. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, this seems like it has really big
Speaker 1: potential for just the broader human knowledge about like what
Speaker 1: our bodies can take and what they can't, and just
Speaker 1: general like physics of lifting things. Plus I totally read
Speaker 1: that journal article. If we had been able to access
Speaker 1: something like this for this episode, I would have been thrilled.
Speaker 1: So if anybody out there is researching the physics or
Speaker 1: the the health issues related to hook suspension, let us know.
Speaker 1: We'd love to take a peek of that research. Alright.
Speaker 1: So that leaves us with the next and final question,
Speaker 1: what does an individual feel in a hook suspension? What's
Speaker 1: going on with pain and pleasure? Yeah, I'm so back
Speaker 1: to our previous examples, which many listeners are probably going,
Speaker 1: you guys don't know pain. Pain. You don't know the
Speaker 1: meaning of the word, you know, like uh, me putting
Speaker 1: the wrong sailine in my eye and Robert taking out
Speaker 1: an and grown tonail is probably nothing compared to this, right,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, there's a purpose to this
Speaker 1: that in you know, involves sort of again transcending becoming
Speaker 1: something else. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we will jump right into
Speaker 1: this area. All right, we're back, you know. I I
Speaker 1: what you just said prior to our break made me
Speaker 1: think of hell Razor again because you kind of did
Speaker 1: a pinhead voice there that was my not not a
Speaker 1: very good piure, But it does remind me that in
Speaker 1: the especially in the first hell Raiser movie and definitely
Speaker 1: in Clive Barker's original The hell Bound Heart, it's less
Speaker 1: about pain and more that these uh, the Centobytes are
Speaker 1: are you know since uh Cincinnats, I guess, and they
Speaker 1: have been just exploring the limits of human sensation in
Speaker 1: ways that go beyond pleasure or pain. And I always
Speaker 1: found that that the better read it becomes more about
Speaker 1: pain and just sort of torturous demons as monsters that
Speaker 1: are one. But early on it's like, like the the Centobytes,
Speaker 1: you can't really say they're evil because they're not. It's
Speaker 1: not like they want to hurt somebody. It's just that
Speaker 1: they're understanding of mortal sensation is so far beyond anything
Speaker 1: that a human could could understand. This is a brief aside,
Speaker 1: but I think a lot of people forget that about
Speaker 1: the original Hell Raiser, that Pinhead and the Centobytes aren't
Speaker 1: really like the villains per se, and that they're the
Speaker 1: villain is like it was his name, Uncle Frank, the
Speaker 1: guy who who's like skinless and growing up in the attic.
Speaker 1: Like you know that that's a movie that actually has
Speaker 1: some really interesting themes because of Barker, uh, specifically about pain,
Speaker 1: pleasure and just like the human experience, which I think
Speaker 1: is what makes it such a classic. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: the cinembytes are essentially just a very inhuman bureaucratic organization.
Speaker 1: It gets wound up in a in a in a
Speaker 1: family dispute. Yeah, it gets bad when they start like
Speaker 1: putting CD players inside their faces and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But by the third Hell Raiser it's gone an entirely
Speaker 1: different direction. All right. But but back to the real
Speaker 1: world of hook suspension. So it is h it is
Speaker 1: again a consensual exercise. If we haven't been clear on that,
Speaker 1: Let me just drive at home no matter what you
Speaker 1: saw in the cell. Uh, it's, it's it's It's definitely
Speaker 1: a choice that one makes, and it's far from an
Speaker 1: impulsive activity. So matters of health and physics are carefully calculate,
Speaker 1: calculated for the purely physical aspects of the event. But
Speaker 1: then on top of that, the participant is gonna be
Speaker 1: weighing in on the inner complexities of the experience. So
Speaker 1: anticipation priming, uh, it all accentuates the already complex interplay
Speaker 1: of nerve response in psychology, It's like anything, you're building
Speaker 1: up your anticipation for it. You have certain expectations that
Speaker 1: are going to be met or aren't going to be met,
Speaker 1: and also expectations and understandings of what's going to take
Speaker 1: place that they're going to color your experience and then
Speaker 1: how you reflect on that experience. Yeah, and you can
Speaker 1: see how that played into ceremonial practices, right. There was
Speaker 1: build up before the ceremony. There's the act of it itself,
Speaker 1: there's the communal aspect, and then there's sort of like
Speaker 1: the calm down of your you're lowered in your you're
Speaker 1: still around your community, right, like you're around like a
Speaker 1: supportive group of people. Um, and then the actual like
Speaker 1: hanging part, the feeling of shock that's involved in that.
Speaker 1: We got all kinds of chemicals involved there, right, there's endorphins, serotonin, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And those are obviously producing a sort of high like
Speaker 1: we talked about. But again, I think the key to
Speaker 1: this seems to be about being part of a group.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'd love to hear from people out
Speaker 1: there who have different experiences, but it seems to me like,
Speaker 1: I guess you could just like rig yourself up in
Speaker 1: a closet or something like that. Have to be a
Speaker 1: big closet, but uh, and you would get something out
Speaker 1: of it, but I don't think it would be the
Speaker 1: same as what you're getting when you're like you're working
Speaker 1: together with people, they're thinking about your well being and
Speaker 1: it's it's all about you sort of clearing your mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And on the communal aspect here, it's also to keep
Speaker 1: in mind that this applies to not only the individual
Speaker 1: that's suspended, but those who are facilitating it in those
Speaker 1: who are observing it. This ties in with a Neil
Speaker 1: Durkheim's collective effervescence theory, and this is the idea that
Speaker 1: a communal ritual generates a kind of shared electricity. Uh.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of like, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: why I like going to yoga class more than I
Speaker 1: like doing yoga home. I do yoga at home, and
Speaker 1: I it feels good and I'm able to kind of
Speaker 1: like work the kinks out. But when I go to class,
Speaker 1: it's a communal thing. I'm out, I'm in public. I'm
Speaker 1: not a particularly like social person to begin with, so
Speaker 1: this is a good experience to get me out and
Speaker 1: like engaging with other people. I went to a really
Speaker 1: crowded yoga class at a local um Asheram recently and uh,
Speaker 1: and at first I was like, oh, I'm I got
Speaker 1: a way over my head and this way too crowded.
Speaker 1: I'm just packed in like sardines with everyone. But then
Speaker 1: it was a a good yoga class, and then be
Speaker 1: there was something about being there was so many people
Speaker 1: that we it was a very communal experience. I felt
Speaker 1: like I was in that movie Society where I'll just
Speaker 1: kind of like moving together. Yeah, I've had that to
Speaker 1: My local UM studio does classes on holidays like on
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, and there jam packed when
Speaker 1: they do them on those holidays. So you're like, I
Speaker 1: think you've you've got enough room for maybe like forty
Speaker 1: or fifty people in this room, and you're just literally
Speaker 1: need a knee, like you know, full on doing like
Speaker 1: some pretty difficult poses. Although there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: inversions in a class like right. And of course this
Speaker 1: kind of scenario applies to any kind of communal, secular,
Speaker 1: or religious event that's taken place in a certain amount
Speaker 1: of ritual to it. But as part of the human
Speaker 1: experience just in general, you know, I mean, like I
Speaker 1: would imagine that, like there is the same sort of
Speaker 1: just general good feeling that comes out of going to
Speaker 1: church on Sunday morning that you and I get out
Speaker 1: of going to a yoga class or somebody else gets
Speaker 1: out of body suspension. Yeah, and but you have this
Speaker 1: added level of physical exertion that is involved here. And
Speaker 1: and this can actually play into one's connection to a group.
Speaker 1: Having having completed a suspension, one may feel more connected
Speaker 1: with the group for having experienced a painful ride of passage.
Speaker 1: This is a process that was actually explored in in
Speaker 1: a nineteen nine United States Army psychology study, not really suspension,
Speaker 1: but just as far as pain and how it a
Speaker 1: relates to your experience as being part of a group.
Speaker 1: Psychologist Elliott Aronsen of Stanford and Judson Mills. They used
Speaker 1: electric shocks and found that individuals who received severe electric
Speaker 1: shocks before entering a group value their membership more than
Speaker 1: those who received mild shocks. It's almost kind of a
Speaker 1: hazing scenario. But this is another like part of like
Speaker 1: it reminds me of like the classic Milgram study too.
Speaker 1: It's like that period of time what Milgram was earlier
Speaker 1: than I believe, but you know that idea that like
Speaker 1: you could get away was something then, you know. All right,
Speaker 1: So let's come back to just pain itself for a
Speaker 1: little bit. I know that we've talked about the communal
Speaker 1: aspects here obviously, as as we've discussed. Pain itself is
Speaker 1: kind of hard to tag down, you know. Um, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a very distressing feeling that involves regions of
Speaker 1: the brain that are also associated associated with the enjoyment
Speaker 1: of food, drugs, and sex. So you have some shared
Speaker 1: pathways there for sure. And uh, and then what else
Speaker 1: is going on? Well, let's look at a few a
Speaker 1: few tidbits here. So a two thousand six University of
Speaker 1: Michigan study revealed that the brain's dopamine system is highly
Speaker 1: active while someone experiences pain, and that this response varies
Speaker 1: between individuals in a way that relates directly to how
Speaker 1: the pain makes them feel. And when spiritual or secular
Speaker 1: ritual is involved, the ritual in and of itself can
Speaker 1: arouse the participant and trigger hormones that stimulate the reward
Speaker 1: systems of the brain. And this, according to anthropologists Dmitries Zagalates,
Speaker 1: can cause sensations such as pain or fear to transform
Speaker 1: into pleasurable experiences through a dopamine spike uh so, an
Speaker 1: increase in the New York peptides that we call endorphins.
Speaker 1: Uh This binds to the brains opiate receptors, producing the
Speaker 1: same soothing euphoria that is felt to a certain extent
Speaker 1: by marathon runners during a runner's high. So this is
Speaker 1: base sickly the same thing. Well, I'm I'm really generalizing here,
Speaker 1: but the same effect that we get when we take
Speaker 1: various kinds of drugs, whether they're legal or illegal. Right Like,
Speaker 1: they're influencing the amount of certain chemicals and proteins in
Speaker 1: our system that makes us feel a certain way. There's
Speaker 1: something about this. That seems better to me than just
Speaker 1: like popping a pill in that like, again, you're engaging
Speaker 1: in the human activity of community. Yeah, well, and I
Speaker 1: definitely agree that. One of the things to keep in
Speaker 1: mind here is that someone who's engaging in hook suspension
Speaker 1: does not have an alien biology or an alien psychology.
Speaker 1: It's like they have the same their their body and
Speaker 1: their experience is the same mix of chemicals, that the
Speaker 1: same biomachinery. They're just interacting with it in a way
Speaker 1: that you were not. But they're not producing feelings that
Speaker 1: are necessarily like like that different than something you've experienced, right, Yeah, which,
Speaker 1: god man, the more we talk about this, the more
Speaker 1: the cel but comes ridiculous. I mean that movie was
Speaker 1: silly already, but like when you think about it, that
Speaker 1: like the premise where it's like, oh, somebody who's into
Speaker 1: this body suspension practice, of course they would be a
Speaker 1: serial killer, you know, like it's just it's poor writing, Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Come on, now, remember we talked about priming earlier. What's
Speaker 1: going on in your mind is you're preparing to to
Speaker 1: go into this what people were telling you, what you're expecting. Well,
Speaker 1: many descriptions of first time hook suspensions. They speak to
Speaker 1: this anticipation of extreme sensation, and according to a two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen study from the University of Oslo, pain that
Speaker 1: hits less severely than expected may give us a rush
Speaker 1: of release or even something like pleasure on top of
Speaker 1: the endorphins. You know, what this made me think of
Speaker 1: is just and I think almost everybody can identify with this,
Speaker 1: going to the doctor and getting a shot or getting
Speaker 1: your blood drawn. Like for me, like I go and
Speaker 1: I just go, okay, Like I anticipate that the pain
Speaker 1: is going to come. I prepare my mind for it.
Speaker 1: The needle is inserted, my blood is being drawn, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, after like two or three seconds, I'm don't
Speaker 1: don't feel it anymore other than the blood draining out
Speaker 1: of my body. You know. Uh. That's I think, like
Speaker 1: a relatable thing that most people can think of, similar
Speaker 1: to body suspension, just on a like micro level. Indeed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, on top of that too, we we
Speaker 1: talked about transcendence and sort of altered states with individuals
Speaker 1: that are undergoing a hook suspension, and there's a there's
Speaker 1: an interesting study that lines up with that as well.
Speaker 1: A two thousand fourteen study from Northern Illinois University, and
Speaker 1: they linked various like B D S, M, S and
Speaker 1: M type activities to altered states of mind in keeping
Speaker 1: with those achieved through yoga or meditation. So basically what
Speaker 1: happened here was the researchers administered to cognitive test to
Speaker 1: S and M participants following a A A switching scene,
Speaker 1: and based on the findings, they suspect that pain altered
Speaker 1: blood flow in the brain, particularly to the dorso lateral
Speaker 1: prefrontal cortex, which plays into our ability to distinguish self
Speaker 1: from other. Yeah, so this is where you get into
Speaker 1: things that are like a little bit more dangerous like cutting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but also it's where we can easily see some
Speaker 1: of the science behind the idea that someone could suspend
Speaker 1: from hooks totally have have this physical pain experience and
Speaker 1: lose some sense of themselves, to have this this experience
Speaker 1: of of lifting, of flying above their worries and concerns
Speaker 1: and their anxieties and their baggage and and finding this
Speaker 1: place of release. And in fact, I found a quote
Speaker 1: from Alan Faulkner, who's talked about here, and he said, quote,
Speaker 1: if life had a dial to adjust the volume, suspension
Speaker 1: has a way of accessing this invisible knob and turning
Speaker 1: it down again, like totally in line with my experience
Speaker 1: of both yoga and uh uh, sensory deprivation takes like
Speaker 1: it's just it takes for for me, like I I
Speaker 1: have a a particularly sensitive of nervous system, right, Like
Speaker 1: I take in a lot of sensory information, I think
Speaker 1: more than most people. But again it's hard to tell
Speaker 1: when I do yoga or when I'm laying in the
Speaker 1: float tank or whatever. Again, that's a perfect metaphor just
Speaker 1: turning the volume down just it calms everything down. It's nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's yeah, that's basically what's happen going on with
Speaker 1: hook suspension here. So obviously we again we're not saying
Speaker 1: go try this. We are not. We're certainly saying not
Speaker 1: trying to tell you to go try it yourself on
Speaker 1: your own. But hopefully what we've done here is we've
Speaker 1: been able to take something that is that is often
Speaker 1: seen is just this outsider weirdo thing and putting it
Speaker 1: framing it in a way that lines up with with
Speaker 1: with more relatable modes of human experience. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you the audience, if you
Speaker 1: have experienced with this. Obviously we've heard from a couple
Speaker 1: of you already, but uh, please tell us what we
Speaker 1: got right and maybe what we got wrong about this.
Speaker 1: Also let us know about your own experience it is
Speaker 1: with it, or maybe you've witnessed one of these ceremonies
Speaker 1: that we talked about. Uh, it's It's a fascinating line
Speaker 1: of inquiry and I'm curious to see where it goes next,
Speaker 1: especially like we were mentioning, if academics actually get involved
Speaker 1: and start doing research studies on it. Indeed, and you know,
Speaker 1: I think get involved in ways that are not just
Speaker 1: simply becoming cinabytes that we had it was it Dr Kleinard.
Speaker 1: I believe in the second movie he's the oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: British doctor who ends up getting turned into this crazy
Speaker 1: cinebyte with a big worm attached to This is true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought for a minute you're going to reference the
Speaker 1: monster science episode that you did on centobytes. Oh yes, yes,
Speaker 1: we did do one on sinovites. It actually touches on
Speaker 1: some of the some of the pain related details that
Speaker 1: that we covered here. So this is a link to that.
Speaker 1: This is a good segue to our website stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com, where all of our videos
Speaker 1: are at, along with all of our podcasts. So if
Speaker 1: you've never seen Monster Science before you want to see
Speaker 1: this particular one, you're in for a treat. Go look
Speaker 1: at it on stuff to Blow your Mind and dot com.
Speaker 1: There's also a blog post galore. In fact, Robert just
Speaker 1: posted a pretty lengthy I wouldn't even call it a
Speaker 1: blog post. You did a full on article about this
Speaker 1: topic on our site. Uh. We've also got links up
Speaker 1: to our social media accounts Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think there's a YouTube button on there too,
Speaker 1: because we're doing this Facebook series these days called Trailer Talk,
Speaker 1: where we we we spin off from these podcast episodes
Speaker 1: we look at some movie trailers talk about sometimes be
Speaker 1: a lot of times it's be movies or other horror
Speaker 1: sci fi genre films and how they tie into the
Speaker 1: topics of the week. And I'm not sure there's I
Speaker 1: think there's a strong chance we'll have something tied in
Speaker 1: with these episodes. We'll see how it comes together. I
Speaker 1: think so a lot of movie just came up in
Speaker 1: this episode. So yeah, I mean so I would expect
Speaker 1: this let's see if this episode publishes the week after
Speaker 1: recording it, then a couple of days later. They're usually
Speaker 1: on Fridays when we do these Facebook lives, and they
Speaker 1: then are both on our Facebook page for watching and
Speaker 1: on YouTube. Yeah, you can find archives on YouTube for sure.
Speaker 1: And if you want to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: the old fashioned way, we'll just send us an email
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: that how stuff works dot com