Glob-a-log

Now, I don’t believe there is such a thing as acrophobia. What people call a ‘fear of height’ I would call a proper sense of proportions.

When dropped from even a relatively low building the human body tends to go ‘Splat!’ In fact, remember those forefathers of ours who left the relative safety of their trees? Well, they climbed down – very carefully. If the first few of them had dropped down, the rest of us would still live in those trees.

In other words, our brains are hard-wired to distrust great heights. People who go mountaineering, or para-gliding, or parachute & bungee-jumping are not brave: they are simply too stupid and too bored for their own good. Exactly the kind of character traits evolution is quite good at nipping – or splatting - in the bud, were it not for the regrettable fact that human engineering keeps these failed specimens alive, so they can pass on their dubious genes.

Of course, thrill-seeking is never the cause but always a symptom of the disease called decadence. People who live in war-torn countries, or eke out a living in places where diseases and famine spread like a peanut butter wildfire – people like that don’t seek for adventure, for an adrenaline rush; they are happy enough to make it to the end of the day, without having the last rites spoken over them or members of their family.

Anyway, fear of heights? Simply a good working knowledge of the laws of gravity, if you ask me – and it truly beats me why people would want to go on roller coasters or jump from planes for fun. Still, if you want to shut up your inner forefather who climbed carefully out of that tree and if you insist that you want to overcome that sensible respect for heights, the following article may be of great interest to you:

Billed by its organisers as a kind of mass-hypnosis, the experimental event at the world-class Edinburgh International Climbing Arena combined neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and hypnotherapy with an aerial assault course that would tax an acrobat, let alone an acrophobic: a zip ride launching into mid-air, followed by a scramble across nets and wooden structures dangling from the arena ceiling. Gary Flockhart, co-founder of Brain Train, the Scottish company that organised the event, explains that his combination of hypnotherapy, repeated mantras and guided visualisations was devised to unseat the deeply ingrained memories that lie at the root of most phobias.

What’s more, it seems to work:

Suzanne O’Brien believes her phobia originated in a childhood trip up Edinburgh’s Scott Monument at the age of eight. [Now] once mentally prepared and strapped into her harness, O’Brien was the first in her group to attack the assault course after taking a running jump off the edge of the launch platform. Out of 44 participants, an impressive 42 completed the course with her.

Though I still would like to remind people that many a ‘Let’s do it!’ was, is and always will be followed by a very final and resounding ‘Splat!’

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 29th, 2008 at 20:15 and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.