energy

Body Language as a Function of Thermodynamics and the Laws of Motion Mar 13, 2015

What is body language? I’ve been working on an e-book concerning body language and came across this video which purportedly debunks Monty Roberts’ “Join Up” method of horse training. I’ve written about this video before but want to revisit the topic as an exercise in critical thinking. http://www.coffscoastadvocate.com.au/story/2012/07/13/horse-training-methods-questioned/ This article demonstrates how interpreting behavior in […]

Electricity as the Basis of Behavior Jul 19, 2014

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25894-meet-the-electric-life-forms-that-live-on-pure-energy.html#.U8rFDo1dWYk   Everything about the behavior of these bacterium is in direct response to energy proper, nothing interim such as digestion to reduce something to its energetic essence, it begins and ends with essence. Could the behavior of animals evolved to be different from such a platform in that their minds are configured to reduce […]

The Nature of Fear Jan 26, 2014

Aggression and the Nature of Fear Since in my view all expressions of anti-social aggression are manifestations of fear, it would prove fruitful to take a closer look at the nature of fear. Fear is the collapse of a state of attraction. And because a dog doesn’t discriminate between physical and emotional equilibrium, all forms […]

Geese, Metabolism, Embodied Cognition Jan 21, 2014

Here are three articles that each suggest how important energy is to every aspect of existence, most importantly cognition. My point being that the current tendency in behaviorism to read rational processes into the minds of dogs is off the mark because an energetic logic hasn’t been pursued to its logical exhaustion before ascribing rational […]

What Is Energy? Dec 03, 2013

Have you ever heard a dog owner observe, usually plaintively, that their dog has a lot of energy? Do they mean their dog is mysteriously plugged into an invisible power grid, or it’s in the beam of an astral projection filling them with some kind of cosmic radiation, are they speaking gibberish? Throughout this site […]

Consciousness is Energy Aug 09, 2013

Consciousness is energy, its interface with nature is emotion, and like energy consciousness as emotion moves as a wave. These waves are physically embodied as emotional affects (butterflies in the stomach, chill up the spine, queasy feeling, wobbly in the knees, shortness of breath, sense of weightlessness, flow, resonance, etc., etc.); affects that evolved in […]

Point About Energy Jul 26, 2013

The Unknown Scientist: “I get the feeling that he doesn’t even read the articles he links to. Did he miss this?” “Once flowers hide away their pollen this way, natural selection favors bees that can give the flowers a harder shake. The harder the bees shake, Dr. Vallejo-Marín and his colleagues have found, the more […]

Design In Nature Mar 04, 2012

Like Sang, I am reading “Design In Nature” and I’m going to post a series of quotes as I go through, some of which are instantly translatable into NDT terms. I don’t want to leap to a conclusion without reading and digesting the book in its entirety, but the resonance is so far pretty overwhelming. […]

Making Sense of “Making Sense of the Nonsense” Mar 03, 2012

System: 1) A complete exhibition of essential principles or facts, arranged in a rational or organized whole, or a complex of ideas or principles forming a coherent whole. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary   When a personality theory (one animal relative to another animal as in a dominance/submissive interaction) introduces a principle of energy in order […]

Why “Making Sense of the Nonsense” Doesn’t Make Sense Mar 01, 2012

It’s my premise that whenever one tries to explain a natural system (such as the animal mind) with a personality theory (the animal as a self-contained entity of intelligence) one will always generate self-defeating logic loops and this will require more and more complex rationales to keep these self-annihilating principles from running into each other. […]

Strogatz On Sync Feb 20, 2012

“For some reason we take pleasure in synchronizing.” Steven Strogatz     The debate on Marc Bekoff’s blog on Psychology Today about the nature of “dominance” in social behavior has caused me to revisit the Ted lecture on the nature of synchronization by Steven Strogatz.   http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_strogatz_on_sync.html I fail to see how someone deeply involved […]

Cousy Getting Under The Charge Sep 11, 2011

If a dog doesn’t love to bite, then it needs to bite and a dog that guards something (food/resting place/body region/owner’s attention) is how that dog gets the opportunity to express that last .01%. It’s not that it wants the food/toy/resting place/attention etc., but that it needs these things in order to be granted instinctual […]

Do You Believe In Evolution? Jul 28, 2011

Dolphins use electrosensing to locate prey: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20732-electric-dolphins-cetaceans-with-a-seventh-sense.html?full=true&print=true A Serbian boy manifests magnetism strong enough to hold onto metal objects, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360081/Bogdan-The-seven-year-old-Serbian-boy-appears-magnetic.html   Animals of course migrate by way of earth’s magnetic field and recently it’s been discovered that humans carry a gene in their eye  http://www.bionews.org.uk/page_97703.asp that makes a protein, cryptochrome, which in insects senses the […]

Emotion As Energy In Service To The Network Jul 25, 2011

Lee on the NDT Buzz page draws our attention to a science story that affirms my belief in an energy theory of behavior. In the eighties, I was inspired in this direction by reading about “packs” of Wolf Spiders that hunt Musk Ox Larvae, that in response to predation, herd up into defensive circles, hence […]

More On Emotional Projection May 20, 2011

Adam asks: “Also, is eye contact from the object of attraction onto the dog, required for this phenomenon of emotional projection?” It’s not required as a two way deal, but the dog fixates on the eyes of what it’s attracted to because this gives it direct and instant access to its own body’s physical center […]

Playgrounds Are Network Play At Work Dec 11, 2010

Thank you for your great answers and I feel each response is a variant of the same underlying phenomenon. In other words, there’s no “reason” why children love seesaws and swings, rather their bodies and minds (just as it is for all living beings) evolved to feel good when (1) riding on a wave and […]

“Stroke of Insight” Nov 13, 2010

I’ve heard Jill Bolte Taylor, the author of “Stroke of Insight”, on radio interviews and she also has a lecture on TED.com. Recently my agent Farley Chase, who is reading the book, sent me the following passages and I’ve quoted his email below. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist suffers a stroke and recovers (and) because […]

Natural Dog Training and Evolution Oct 12, 2010

I tend not to get involved in discussions of behavior on other forums as it’s very difficult to keep the discussion focused like a laser beam on the salient points. The argument quickly radiates out in many different directions and the threads always seem to peter out into a debate of either who-is-the-better-dog-trainer or what-color-coat-does-your-dog-like. […]

There Is Only One Energy Sep 15, 2010

Apparently Lee Kelley has the temerity to question Patricia McConnell, one of the leading lights of dogdom, over her methodology, the particulars of which she posted in public, in response to two of her dogs not getting along. In my mind Lee wasn’t “attacking” her honor, virtue, honesty, compassion, intelligence or integrity, he was questioning […]

Jayward Thinking and Self-Defeating Logic Loops Aug 22, 2010

One of the reasons the energy argument I’m making on this website strikes some as stupendous is because unless one can articulate the distinction between emotion and instinct, and between a feeling and a thought, then one doesn’t know what emotion is or what a feeling is, which means the terms will be used loosely […]

Two Brain Makeup Aug 16, 2010

(Edited For Clarity) Heather brought up some good questions and I want to make sure my answer is clear. Heather: “The two-brain makeup, would you say that is also virtually present in humans?” KB: Yes, all mammals have two brains, the central nervous system (Big-Brain) and the enteric nervous system (little-brain.) The reason animals have […]

Stump the Chump Jun 21, 2010

Thanks to Christine for suggesting this section! The following is an excerpt from her comment: “My first contribution is a scenario: A few years ago my family was out at camp. My sister brought her dog “Happy” a very nervous and high-strung beagle mix. The first thing she did was to bite Duncan in the […]

What's the difference between Natural Dog Training and Operant Conditioning? Mar 15, 2010

Natural Dog Training is fundamentally concerned with motive whereas Operant Conditioning is fundamentally concerned with reinforcements. All subsequent points of departure proceed from this distinction. Furthermore, this distinction reveals that two concepts integral to behavioral science 1) animals learn by reinforcement, and 2) the notion of “high value” rewards actually represent an inherent contradiction in […]

Behan is too new-agey in his explanations to be taken seriously. He also dismisses large tracks of learning theory and psychology and ethology. He prefers undefined explanations like "emotional circuitry of dog and owner" Frankly I tend to dismiss and distrust anyone that talks about 'energy' or 'vibrations' to explain animal behavior. Mar 11, 2010

I don’t dismiss behavioral science and I value its many astute observations and precise descriptions; however it is missing the fundamental element of behavior, to wit: the animal’s nature which is an evolved function of energy. So what is energy? Science understands energy as an “action potential,” as a differential in concentration of “charged” particles […]

I agree there is energy – everything does have energy – but there are also plain old basic learning principles that have been around for a long time.

Behavioral science is indeed being consistent by not using the term energy, and it’s also quite wise to avoid any use of the term because once we add energy into a discussion of behavior, then the paradigm shifts wholesale. On the other hand we can’t agree that there is energy, that everything has energy, and […]

Definitions Jan 15, 2010

Some of my definitions are scattered across this site and mostly in terms of why-dogs-do-what-they-do, but what follows is a more concise summary. ENERGY: An action potential, a differential of force between two poles. Energy in animals builds up by virtue of a bipolar, two-brain makeup each with its own divergent agenda just as if […]

Dog Predicts Earthquake Caught on Camera Jan 12, 2010

I can say that the ability of a dog to feel an earthquake before it happens, often hours, is the same capacity of a dog to feel an impending epileptic seizure or diabetic attack in an owner, hours before it happens. Its sense of continuum is picked up through its balance circuitry and when there […]

On Training a Dog to "OUT" Nov 10, 2009

I want the word “OUT” to be the decisive trigger that causes the dog to release the grip. But before the dog can be receptive to its handler’s voice, it must first be able to feel its handler and this allows it to be attracted to handler inputs. It must also come to feel that […]

A Challenge Oct 08, 2009

A Fractal Pattern What excites me about my energy model is that I believe I’ve discovered a constantly repeating fractal expression of behavior: a simple and easily recognizable module that constantly repeats itself to factor out more and more complex behaviors and ultimately, a social and cooperative nature. Since all of nature seems to be […]

Books about Natural Dog Training by Kevin Behan

In Your Dog Is Your Mirror, dog trainer Kevin Behan proposes a radical new model for understanding canine behavior: a dog’s behavior and emotion, indeed its very cognition, are driven by our emotion. The dog doesn’t respond to what the owner thinks, says, or does; it responds to what the owner feels. And in this way, dogs can actually put people back in touch with their own emotions. Behan demonstrates that dogs and humans are connected more profoundly than has ever been imagined — by heart — and that this approach to dog cognition can help us understand many of dogs’ most inscrutable behaviors. This groundbreaking, provocative book opens the door to a whole new understanding between species, and perhaps a whole new understanding of ourselves.
  Natural Dog Training is about how dogs see the world and what this means in regards to training. The first part of this book presents a new theory for the social behavior of canines, featuring the drive to hunt, not the pack instincts, as seminal to canine behavior. The second part reinterprets how dogs actually learn. The third section presents exercises and handling techniques to put this theory into practice with a puppy. The final section sets forth a training program with a special emphasis on coming when called.