Category: Health

How nature heals

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These beautiful autumn days touch the heart and the spirit. Simply being out in nature can heal and restore us, without the need for words or explanations or ideas.

We can learn from it as to how to be with someone who is going through a time of difficulty:

I was sad one day and went for a walk; I sat in a field.

A rabbit noticed my sadness and came near

It often does not take more than that to help at times –

to just be close to creatures who are so full of knowing

so full of love, that they don’t

chat

they just gaze with their marvellous understanding.

John of the Cross

How to remain calm

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You will soon find that thoughts are like the wind; they come and go.

The secret is to not ‘think’ about thoughts, but allow them to flow through the open mind.

Soygal Rinpoche

Quietness

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Better is one handful of quietness

than two hands full of toil

and grasping after the wind.

Ecclesiastes 4:6

Yoga fights off depression, better than some other exercises

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Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and McLean Hospital have found that practicing yoga may increase the levels of  gamma-aminobutyric (GABA) in the brain, a   neurotransmitter associated with calming anxiety. It was found that three sessions of yoga a week can help fight off depression because by boosting GABA, it stimulates the function of brain and central nervous system and helps promote a state of calm within the body.

The research was published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, and found that the levels of  GABA are much higher in those that do yoga than those do the equivalent of a similarly strenuous exercise such as walking. Using magnetic resonance spectroscopic (MRS) imaging, the researchers compared the GABA levels of eight subjects prior to and after one hour of yoga.  The study also involved questions about their psychological wellbeing throughout the study. The finding were that those who did yoga reported lower levels of anxiety and higher increases in their mood than the walkers.

“Our findings clearly demonstrate that in experienced yoga practitioners, brain GABA levels increase after a session of yoga,” said lead author Chris Streeter, MD,  assistant professor of psychiatry and neurology at BUSM and a research associate at McLean Hospital. These finding support the use of yoga-based exercises in the 8 week MBSR Programme.

When someone is ill

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The word “compassion” literally means “to suffer with”. It seems quite unlikely that suffering with another person would bring joy. Yet being with a person in pain, offering simple presence to someone in despair, sharing with a friend times of confusion and uncertainty. . . such experience can bring us deep joy. Not happiness, not excitement, not great satisfaction, but the quiet joy of being there for someone else and living in deep solidarity with our brothers and sisters in this human family.  Often this is a solidarity in weakness, in brokenness, in woundedness, but it leads us to the center of joy, which is sharing our humanity with others.

Henri Nouwen

How you talk about others says a lot about you

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We do not see the world as it is, we see the world as we are.
The Talmud

New research carried out at Wake Forest University has found that we reveal a lot about ourselves in the way we talk about others. They found that how positively we speak about others is linked to how happy and emotionally stable we are ourselves. The study, which appears in the July 2010 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found strong associations between how positively a person judges others and then how happy, kind-hearted,  emotionally stable and capable they are described by others.

By way of contrast, negative perceptions of others are linked to higher levels of narcissism and antisocial behavior. As Dustin Wood, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Wake Forest and lead author of the study states,  A huge suite of negative personality traits are associated with viewing others negatively. The simple tendency to see people negatively indicates a greater likelihood of depression and various personality disorders.

Thus our speech about others reveals information about our own characteristics, such as our well-being, and our mental health. Mindfulness helps us be more deliberate in the words we use, by enabling us be more aware of  all the discussions taking place in the committee of voices running our minds. By practicing right speech, this study seems to suggest that we not only help our relationships become kinder. We also change our own level of happiness.

Wood et al, “Perceiver Effects as Projective Tests: What Your Perceptions of Others Say About You”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,  July 2010