Have you ever been the victim of an unsuspecting contagion, like a yawn? Is it possible that by simply reading about a yawn, you will want to yawn?

Researchers say yawning has to do with the temperature of the brain; when it gets too far off normal, yawning can help cool it down. Healthline agrees with my theory that yawning is a way of waking or resetting. “The motion helps stretch the lungs and their tissues, and it allows the body to flex its muscles and joints. It may also force blood toward your face and brain to increase alertness.”

So many contagions – like laughter and applause – can have an effect without us even being aware or in control. I think that is what “culture” is: we do what everyone does simply by being the empathetic, community-oriented, influential individuals we are by nature. And when culture is infused with habits of kindness, responsibility, support and growth, it operates on a high vibration of love and abundance. Conversely, when culture breeds selfishness, greed, division and control, the distance it creates is like a nasty virus; in fact, indigenous people have a term for it: Wetiko.

“Wetiko is an Algonquin word for a cannibalistic spirit that is driven by greed, excess, and selfish consumption” write Alnoor Ladha and Martin Kirk in KOSMOS. The Wetiko virus is what Indigenous people claimed was the chronic infection of the European colonists. “Wetiko short-circuits the individual’s ability to see itself as an enmeshed and interdependent part of a balanced environment and raises the self-serving ego to supremacy.” The pilgrims saw the tame and orderly land of the natives as wild and savage and rationalized destruction in the name of civilization.

The conundrum: society’s “shadow” (Carl Jung’s term) is Wetiko-infected so our collective unconscious is driven by fear, yet in the process of serving humanity, we serve ourselves. How do we free ourselves of the virus of embedded selfishness and upgrade the frequency of our entanglement?

Aha! ~ Become aware.

We can’t change what we are not aware of, but when we understand the handed-down selfish tendencies – existing with an attitude of being separate from all other living creatures – only then can we break the cycle.

Our individual minds and bodies are part of the collective. We appear separate but we are not. All life forms are exchanging energy, always. Become aware of your thoughts – that determine your feelings that determine your actions – and decide to be true to those that align with your moral compass and make you feel whole and connected.

If a simple yawn can infuse oxygen into one after another after another, imagine what a little kindness can do?

Connect and exchange Tuesday at noon eastern in the Aha! Moment Trailblazers group.

There has never been a better time to take A Human Approach.

Succeed Deliberately!

Jae M. Rang, MAS           

Strategist, Speaker, Author, Mom