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What is joy?
The ancient Greeks and Romans saw emotions as potentially dangerous. The philosopher Epicurus advised his followers to avoid intense feelings of sadness or joy since he believed they upset the body's natural balance. In the Middle Ages, people suffering from depression were thought to be possessed by the devil.
Even as knowledge of science grew, attitudes toward emotions remained mired in myth. The prevailing view of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment was that the superior rational mind - our reason; operated separately from the inferior emotional mind - our passions. This wariness toward emotions became strongly tied to sexism, with women considered the more emotional sex and, therefore, intrinsically weaker than men. Parents have continued to teach their male children to avoid expressing emotions into the 21st century, reminding them that big boys don’t cry. Alive
Self Preservation, Emotion, and Evolution
Evolution not only applies to anatomy, but also to the mind and expressive. behaviour
Robert Plutchik was a psychologist who developed a psycho-evolutionary theory of emotion to unify a number of theoretical perspectives and to better understand the biological and adaptive functions of emotion; to clarify what emotions are; to find ways to measure emotion; relating this information to other psychological disciplines; and to inform psychotherapy.
created the wheel of emotions in order to illustrate the various relationships among the emotions. The intensity of emotion decreases as you move outward and increases as you move toward the wheel's Plutchik centre The intensity of the emotion is indicated by the . . The darker the shade, the more intense the emotion. For example, anger at its least level of intensity is identified as colour . At its highest level of intensity, anger becomes rage. annoyance
Combinations of Emotions: Plutchik's wheel also contains primary dyads, which are combinations of primary emotions that lie next to each other on the wheel of emotions.
Emotions are not simply a feeling state; they do not happen in isolation. Emotions involve stimulus, cognition, complex responses, psychological changes, impulses to action, goal-directed behaviour
Biologists tell us that our emotions are rooted in self-preservation, triggering physiological reactions that enable us to find food, escape danger and reproduce. Noting that the word emotion stems from the Latin verb for, author Daniel Goleman pointed out in Emotional Intelligence, All emotions are, in essence, impulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us. Daniel Goleman move
Cognition serves emotional and biological needs, and developed to predict the future more effectively. Each new cognitive experience that is biologically important is connected with an emotional reaction. The function of emotion is to restore equilibrium after unexpected or unusual events create disequilibrium.
Emotions have also evolved into facial expressions and body language so that each member of the group can signal his or her wants and needs to other members. As John D. Mayer, a leading expert in the study of emotions, has remarked: Emotions convey information about relationships.
Research shows the universal similarity in facial expression of the primary emotions - it is the cause of the emotion that changes culturally.
Research shows the universal similarity in facial expression of the primary emotions - it is the cause of the emotion that changes culturally.
Few experts believe that human beings are born with a full range of emotions. Rather, they theorize, we enter the world with instincts and urges, along with an innate capacity for feeling. As we form personalities and relationships with others, these instincts and urges develop into full-fledged emotions.Sabitri Ghosh, Alive Encyclopedia of Healing
Is Joy An Extraverted Emotion?
On Plutchiks Wheel of Emotion, joy ranks as less intense than ecstasy, but more intense than serenity. It is categorized as a primary emotion, rather than a combination of emotions. Based on this information, and the emotional expression of introverts and extraverts, joy is in the ambiverted extraverted
A person does not need to have an extraverted
Extraverts tend to up-regulate positive emotions like joy and delight, and be more expressive in their rejoicing. Introverts tend to have an outwardly passive style of expression in certain situations.
Extraverts need more cortical stimulation than introverts; the relatively greater cortical arousal of introverts leads to their seeking to reduce stimulation from the environment. Susan Cain
Scientists now know that, while introverts have no special advantage in intelligence, they do seem to process more information than others in any given situation. To digest it, they do best in quiet environments, interacting one on one. Further, their brains are less dependent on external stimuli and rewards to feel good.
As a result, introverts are not driven to seek big hits of positive emotional arousal - they'd rather find meaning than bliss - making them relatively immune to the search for happiness that permeates contemporary (North) American culture. Laurie Helgoe, PhD, Psychology Today
I am 89% introvert, according to my Meyer Brigg's profile, but my behaviour
Affective Neuroscience
Affective Neuroscience is the study of the neural mechanisms of emotion. This interdisciplinary field combines neuroscience with the psychological study of personality, emotion, and mood, and is part of a group labeled behavioural
A careful study ofactions is the most direct way to monitor emotions, but this adds little to our scientific understanding to explain something observable - namely behavioural - in terms of feelings and thoughts that cannot be directly observed. During the height of the behaviour era, many questioned if emotions and thoughts even influenced human behavioural . This unrealistic view is being replaced with the emerging view that behaviour processes do contribute to the control of neuromental . A neuroscience revolution is supplying us with behaviour methods of direct observation, knowledge and understanding of anatomy, neurochemistry, and neurophysiology that is rendering emotions measurable, manipulable, and scientifically real. Jaak Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions newfound
After nearly 40 years of studying the brain mechanisms that underlie our emotions, neuroscientist Richard Davidson has identified six emotional ranges that affect how we think, feel, and react. Your unique emotional style is determined by where you land in each of these six spectra.
The six emotional styles are:
Resilience: How long it takes you to rebound after adversity. Resilience is determined by signals between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.
Outlook: How long you are able to maintain positive emotion.is determined by the levels of activity in the ventral striatum (a part of the brain linked to our reward system). Outlook
Social Intuition: How skilled you are at picking up social signals from other people. Social intuition is shaped by the interplay between the amygdala and fusiform regions.
Self-awareness: How well you are able to perceive the physical sensations in your body that signal emotions. Self-awareness is determined by the ability of theto interpret signals from the body and organs. insula
Sensitivity to Context: How you are at regulating your emotional responses, depending on the context you're in. This sensitivity is driven by activity levels in the hippocampus.
Attention: How sharply and clearly you can focus. Attention is regulated by the prefrontal cortex.
These six spectra combine to influence your personality. Though your emotional style is in part genetic, it is also influenced by environmental factors. The inherent plasticity of the brain means that, through conscious changes, the brain itself (and thus, how you think, feel, and respond) can be changed. Davidson suggests that, by first becoming aware of your own emotional style, you can find if it is helping or hindering you. Richard Davidson
At the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, Davidson and other researchers investigate the qualities of mind such as compassion and mindfulness in order to understand how healthy minds might be cultivated. He is perhaps most famous for his investigations into the neurological effects of meditation, showing how this practice can functionally rewire the brain.
At the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, Davidson and other researchers investigate the qualities of mind such as compassion and mindfulness in order to understand how healthy minds might be cultivated. He is perhaps most famous for his investigations into the neurological effects of meditation, showing how this practice can functionally rewire the brain.
Emotional Intelligence
The Five Components Of Emotional Health
1. Being aware of your emotions. Emotionally healthy people are in touch with their emotions and can identify and acknowledge them as experience.
2. Being able to process your emotions. After connecting with their emotions, emotionally healthy people develop appropriate ways of expressing them.
3. Being sensitive to other people and their emotions and having the ability to empathize. The ability to identify their own emotions enables emotionally healthy people to identify emotions in others and to have an intuitive sense of what it feels like to experience them.
4. Being self-empowered. Emotionally healthy people
5. Being in healthy relationships. Using their emotional intelligence and empathy, emotionally healthy people build and maintain strong, functioning relationships. Alive Encyclopedia of Healing
Personal Intelligence
John D. Mayer, a personality Psychologist who co-developed the theory of emotional intelligence, has introduced the idea of personal intelligence.
People who display such anthemselves and know who they are. They evaluate others more accurately and therefore make more allowances for others' foibles; they are better at acknowledging their own limitations, too. Those who are talented at this reasoning ability understand guesses about how people are likely to behave. And they have a generally good idea about how their acquaintances, colleagues, and friends perceive them - they know their own reputation. At still deeper levels, these individuals recognize that their perceptions of the people around them might require revision at times. John D. Mayer, PhD power make better
Mayer has emphasized: People can reason with emotions in the same way they reason with cognitive information. So you can solve emotional problems just as mathematicians solve math problems.
You can build mental strength. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and the ability to change and develop mental fitness. Amy Morin, The 5 Biggest Myths About Mental Strength
Our personality is the sum of our mental processes; its job is to integrate our mental energy with our capacity for thought and self-control, and to help us express ourselves in our surroundings. We draw on our personality to manage our health and safety, to find the right environments to be in, and to draw on group alliances for protection, companionship, and a sense of identity.
Social and Emotional Learning
Developments in neuroscience and psychology are presenting us with the opportunity to increase our understanding of the inner workings of the brain, and supplying us with the tools (skills) to evolve personally.
This is the same story that isdiscoverable about every aspect of health and basic health habits (skills) - knowledge and understanding about our body is empowering our choices and outcomes, and a new story is being written.
This is the same story that is
The mind is like Velcro for negative experiences, psychologist Rick Hanson is fond of saying, and Teflon for positive ones.
We’ve developed what’s called in science a negativity bias, which means that the brain, to help us survive, preferentially looks for, reacts to, stores, and then recalls negative information over positive information. Greater Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life
We have all experienced the self-inflicted, fixed loop of negativity that feeds our thoughts and beliefs. The internal self-derogatory dialogue, the fixation on an offensive event; we suffer some misfortune - big or small, real or imagined - and the pain or humiliation sticks with us for hours, days, or even years afterward. It is possible, with practice, to over-ride this evolutionary negativity bias. Deepening our positive experience is a skill that we can cultivate.
Neuroscience shows us that our experiences change the structure and function of our brain and nervous system. It is this resilient ability to adapt that gives us the opportunity to change our brain and the quality of our perceptions and experiences. In a healthy body, it takes forty five days to create a new neural pathway.
Empathy, Human Memory, and Feminine Culture
Cultivating awareness of your internal sensations activates parts of the brain called insula that track the internal state of the body, which means that they’re intimately involved in sensing your feelings and crucial for empathy.
Research has shown that as people activate theirinsula more, such as through meditation, theinsula actually gets thicker. In other words, neurons make more and more connections with each other, which actually measurably thickens yourinsula .
This in turn increases your self awareness and your capacity to be more empathetic to others and skilled in all three types of empathy: cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and empathetic concern.
Memory
Memory
For most of us, as we go through the day, most of the moments in life are either neutral or positive. The problem is that neutral or positive moments get remembered with standard memory systems, which is to say they’re mostly in-and-out. But negative experiences are instantly registered and intensely focused on, based on the negativity bias of the brain. Then they get stored in what’s called implicit memory - not so much memory for events, like what I did on my summer vacation, but rather the feeling of being alive. And that implicit memory bank gets shaded in a darker and darker way by the slowly accumulating residue of negative experiences.
To counteract that, we need to actively build up positive implicit memories to balance this unfair accumulation of negative implicit memories. And the way to do that is three steps for sure with an optional fourth step.
The first step is to turn positive events into positive experiences. All kinds of good things happen in our daily life that we hardly notice at all, and if we do, we don’t feel it. Someone pays us a compliment, we hardly pay attention to it, or we deflect it. So instead ofthatm you turn positive events into positive experiences.
Second, really savor it. In other words, the way to remember something is to make it intense, felt in the body, and lasting. That’s how we give those neurons lots and lots time to fire together so they start wiring together. So rather than noticing it and feeling good for a couple of seconds, stay with it. Relish it, enjoy it, for 10, 20, or 30 seconds, so it really starts developing neural structure.
The third step is to sense and intend that this positive experience is sinking into you and becoming a part of you. In other words, it’s becoming woven into the fabric of your brain and yourself.
For bonus points, if you’re so inclined, it’s often very powerful to take a current positive experience and have it kind of go down inside to an old place of pain. Do not do this if you have a trauma history and you get flooded if you think about old pain. The method is to have the old painful material be in the background of awareness while the current positive experience that is its antidote is prominent and strong in a foreground of awareness, and hold both those things in mind for 10 or 20 or 30 seconds straight. If you can’t do that, don’t worry about this fourth step. But if you can do that, wow, this fourth step is really powerful. Honestly over many years, it’s how I filled my own hole in the heart. Buddhas Brain by Rick Hanson
A Practical Guide
Happiness is a form of courage
Emotions are, in part, a chemical event; therefore the physical environment that you create through the 13 Basic Health Habits supplies the building materials for the structural matrix and the chemical ecosystem for healthy physiological function and healthy emotion.
Sleep: 1. Brain metabolic cleaning increases during sleep and is reduced when awake or stressed caused by the production of morewhich increases the size of noreadrenaline cells, decreasing glia system fluid flow. 2. Tissue growth and repair happens during sleep. 3. Proper sleep is required for melatonin production, a powerful antioxidant, and important for circadian rhythm, learning, memory, fertility, immune and nervous system health. 4. Brain events called sharp wave ripples are responsible for consolidating memory, and take place during the deepest levels of sleep. The ripples also transfer learned information from the hippocampus to the neocortex of the brain, where long-term memories are stored. 5. In sleep deprivation and sleep quality studies, blood concentrations of brain molecules neuron-specific enolase (NSE) and S100 calcium binding protein B (S-100B) increased to levels seen in brain damage, and a buildup of beta-amyloid protein, a hallmark of Alzheimers disease, were observed. 6. Sleep deprivation, and poor sleep quality are directly linked to an increase of accidents, and mortality from all causes, depression, and disease. 7. Shortened sleep time is associated with decreases in glymphatic and elevations in leptin The CNS ghrelin. , neuropeptide - the hunger hormone, stimulates hunger, while ghrelin signals satiety to the brain and suppresses appetite. leptin Digestive Health and Nutrition: Brain networks that are associated with the control of feeding are intimately associated with those that are involved in processing emotions, reward, and cognition. 1. Abundant paleontological evidence suggests that there is a direct relationship between access to food and brain size, and that even small differences in diet can have large effects on survival and reproductive success. 2. Omega 3 and 6 essential fatty acids supportprocesses and up-regulate genes that are important for maintaining synaptic function and plasticity. DHA is the most abundant omega-3 fatty acid in cell membranes in the brain and is obtained from diet only. 3. In addition to the capacity of the digestive system to directly stimulate molecular systems that are associated with synaptic plasticity and learning, several digestive hormones or peptides, such as leptin, ghrelin, glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP1) and insulin have been found to influence emotions and cognitive processes. 4. The brain consumes an immense amount of energy relative to the rest of the body. The mechanisms that are involved in the transfer of energy from foods to the neurons are likely to be fundamental to the control of brain function. Processes that are associated with the management of energy in neurons can affect synaptic plasticity, which could explain how metabolic disorders can affect cognitive processes. Synaptic function can, in turn, alter metabolic energy, allowing mental processes to influence somatic function at the molecular level. 5. Excess calories can reduce synaptic plasticity and increase the vulnerability of cells to damage by causing free-radical formation that surpasses the buffering capacity of the cell. A moderate caloric restriction could protect the brain by reducing oxidative damage to cellular proteins, lipids and nucleic acids. 6. The brain is highly susceptible to oxidative damage because of its high metabolic load and its abundance of neurobiological material, such as the poly-unsaturated fatty acids that form the plasma membranes of neural cells. Antioxidants maintain metabolic homeostasis and energy homeostasis in mitochondria. 7. A number of innovative studies are pointing to the importance of dietary components in influencing oxidizable events - that is, non-genetic events, such as DNA methylation, transcriptional activation, translational control, and post-translational modifications that cause a potentially heritable epigenetic change - and the potential for disease modulation. Our Second Brain: The Enteric System phenotypic
Hydration: 1. Water is needed for the production of hormones and neurotransmitters. 2. Water loss is always accompanied by electrolyte loss. Both are critical for proper hydration. Electrolytes are needed for proper hydration of the body. 3. All fluids in the body are electrolyte solutions; fluids with dissolved minerals and salts. Electrolytes are fluid substances containing free ions that make the substance electrically conductive. Electrolytes produce positive and negative ions when dissolved. Electrolytes regulate fluid balance, transport nutrients, support muscle, nerve, and brain function, help convert calories into energy, regulate pH, and conduct energy. 4. The ionic activity of the Na+/K+-ATPase (sodium-potassium pump), which is an essential part of the action potential (and the resting potential) of neurons, requires a reliable supply and stable balance of electrolytes throughout the body. 5. Shock absorber for the brain 6. Dehydration causes shrinkage of brain tissue and an associated increase in ventricular volume. 7. An increase infronto -parietal blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) response, suggesting an inefficient use of brain metabolic activity, and a higher level of neuronal activity in order to achieve the same performance level were observed during executive function tests following dehydration.
Physical Activity: 1. Increases levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and other growth factors 2. Stimulates3. Increases resistance to brain insult 4. Improves learning and mental performance 5. Protection from neurogenesis neuro -degeneration, and alleviation of depression, particularly in elderly populations 6. Increases synaptic plasticity by directly affecting synaptic structure and potentiating synaptic strength (especially in the hippocampus), and by strengthening the underlying systems that support plasticity includingneurogenesis , metabolism, and vascular function. 7. In addition, exercise reduces peripheral risk factors such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, andinflammation which converge to cause brain dysfunction andneuro -degeneration.
Positive Mental Attitude: 1. The inherent plasticity of the brain means that, through conscious changes, the brain itself (and thus, how you think, feel, and respond) can be changed. 2. You can build mental strength. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and the ability to change and develop mental fitness. 3. Emotion regulation lowers cortisol (harmful stress hormone) levels. 4. Social and emotional learning is a sound strategy to improve the skills of social adaptation and functioning. Social and emotional learning changes brain structure and function, gene expression and promotes adaptive emotional and cognitive functioning. 5. Recent research has also established that electrical brainwave patterns of the right and left hemisphere tend to co-ordinate more when we experiencehumour . This is important because evidence shows that depression is accompanied by less co-ordination inbrainwave patterns between the two sides.Humour requires a unique opportunity for the cooperation of cognitive and emotional brain function integration. 6. A PMA leads to healthier lifestyle choices and therefore, increased brain health and function. 7. A positive mental attitude (a basic health habit) has the ability to boost body functions (including happy brain chemicals) and the resistance to disease.
Breathing: 1. Helps to expel waste products, including oxygen-free radicals and other metabolic waste in the brain. 2. Deep breathing triggers the parasympathetic nervous system and counters sympathetic nervous system response to stress. 3. Deep breathing stimulates the vagus nerve to release a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine that catalyzes increased focus and calmness. A direct benefit of more acetylcholine is a decrease in feelings of anxiety and depression. 4. Lowers blood pressure and heart rate and reduces the risk of stroke and cerebral aneurysm. 5. Consistent practice leads to an increase in brain size; the brain experiences growth in areas associated with attention and processing of sensory input. 6. Controlled breathing can alter the expression of genes involved in immune function, energy metabolism and insulin secretion. 7. Long term practice results in changesto the expression of genes associated with how the body reacts to stress.
Sweating: 1. Apocrine sweat glands are controlled by the Autonomic Nervous System and by circulating hormones. Body heat stimulates the part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which controls body temperature and is located above the brain stem. The hypothalamus connects the nervous system to the endocrine system via the pituitary gland and neural and hormonal responses stimulate eccrine sweat gland activity. 2. Death by accumulated poisons occurs in a matter of hours if sweat gland activity is blocked. Properly cared for skin is better able to resist infection, protect our body and regulate body temperature. 3.Hyperthermic conditioning of the body to heat stress through sauna and steam bath use has also been shown to promoteneurogenesis , along with increased physical endurance and muscle mass. 4. The liver, kidneys, stomach, muscles, brain and most other organs are flushed of impurities with increased fluid flow and an increase in metabolic rate. 5. Damaged cells repair faster due to increased metabolic rate. 6. An internal temperature rise affects endocrine glands, accelerates pituitary activity and affectshormonal interplay . 7. The release of steam in a steam bath or when water is thrown onto a heat source in a sauna, creates negative ions, essential in healthy brain function and healing.
Sunlight: 1. Exposure to sunlight causes vitamin D to be produced in your skin. But only a portion of the solar spectrum, known as ultraviolet B (UVB), has this effect. 2. There are specific receptors in the brain for Vitamin D. 3. Vitamin D is critical for cognition. 4. Vitamin D regulates the production of neurotransmitters, hormones, and enzymes. 5. The active form of Vitamin D,calcitriol , plays an important role in genomic actions and gene expression. 6. Sunshine increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF is a protein that plays a pivotal role in neuronal health,neurogenesis , and neural plasticity. 7. Vitamin D helps to clear the plaques in the brain that are known to indicate Alzheimers disease. Vitamin D deficiency contributes to Parkinsons, Alzheimers, depression, learning andbehavioural disorders, hormonal imbalance, inflammation, and infection.
Rest and Relaxation: Many recent studies have corroborated the idea that our mental resources are continuously depleted throughout the day and that various kinds of rest and downtime can both replenish those reserves and increase their volume. 1. Relieves cerebral congestion. 2. Time for rest, relaxation, and reflection is essential to mental processes that affirm our identities, develop our understanding of human behavior and instill an internal code of ethics. These moments of introspection lead to better decision-making. 3. The brain requires substantial downtime to remain industrious and to generate its most innovative ideas. 4. Rest and relaxation replenish the brain’s stores of attention and motivation, encourages productivity and creativity, and is essential to both achieve our highest levels of performance and to simply form stable memories in everyday life. A wandering mind unsticks us in time so that we can learn from the past and plan for the future. Moments of respite may even be necessary to keep one’s moral compass in working order and maintain a sense of self. 5. Coordinated communication between disparate brain regions - the default mode network (DMN), takes place only when resting and relaxing. In the last five years researchers discovered that the DMN is but one of at least five different resting-state networks - circuits for vision, hearing, movement, attention and memory. 6. The default mode network is able to integrate more information from a wide range of brain regions in more complex ways than when the brain is consciously working through a problem. 7. Rest and relaxation is critical to learning and memory. The brain consolidates recently accumulated data, memorizing the most salient information, and essentially rehearses recently learned skills, etching them into its tissue. Master the art of napping - click to view at source
Meditation: 1. Beyond renewing one's powers of concentration, downtime can in fact bulk up the muscle of attention - something that scientists have observed repeatedly in studies on meditation. 2. Mindfulness training is a beneficial strategy to relieve stress, anxiety and depression. 3. Older, long-time expertmeditators outperform their peers and younger test participants on tests of mental acuity. 4. These abilities improved after three-month meditation retreat. 5. Meditation strengthens connections between regions of the default mode network (DMN), for example, and can help people learn to shift more effectively between the DMN and circuits that are most active when we are consciously fixated on a task. Over time expertmeditators may also develop a more intricately wrinkled cortex - the brain’s outer layer, which is necessary for many of our most sophisticated mental abilities, like abstract thought and introspection. 6. Meditation appears to increase the volume and density of the hippocampus, an area of the brain that is absolutely crucial for memory; it thickens regions of the frontal cortex that we rely on to rein in our emotions; and it stymies the typical wilting of brain areas responsible for sustaining attention as we get older. 7. Studies indicate that meditating daily is ultimately more important than the total hours of meditation.
Personal Hygiene: 1. Extreme self-neglect is known as Diogenes syndrome. 2. Self-neglect is abehavioural condition in which an individual neglects to attend to their basic needs, such as personal hygiene. 3. Self-neglect can be as a result of brain injury, dementia or mental illness. It can be a result of any mental or physical illness which has an effect on the person's physical abilities, energy levels, attention, organizational skills or motivation. 4. A decrease in motivation can also be a side effect of psychiatric medications, putting those who require them at a higher risk of self-neglect than might be caused by mental illness alone. 5. The inability, intentional or non-intentional, to maintain a socially and culturally accepted standard of self-care with the potential for serious consequences to the health and well-being of the self-neglecters and perhaps even to their community. 6. The behaviors and characteristics of living in self-neglect include unkempt personal appearance, hoarding items and pets, neglecting household maintenance, living in an unclean environment, poor personal hygiene, and eccentric behaviors. Research also points to behaviors such as unwillingness to take medication, and feelings of isolation. Some of these behaviors could be explained by functional and financial constraints, as well as personal or lifestyle choices. 7. Dental care is critical for physiological health. Healing Cavities Nutritionally
Life Skills: 1.Are a synthesis of social and emotional learning. 2. Values, responsibility for oneself (basic health habits), and to the community, practical skills, communication, conflict prevention and resolution, empathy, love, compassion, and social graces. 3. Emotional Intelligence. 4. Personal Intelligence. 5. All basic health habits are learnedbehaviours , and the younger the age that we learn these habits, the more likely they are to be our dependable, and default system; especially in response to unexpected demands and unplanned stress. 6. Read. 7. Aphorisms
Nature: 1. We need a healthy environment to be healthy and disease-free. 2.Ecopsychology studies the relationship between human beings and the natural world through ecological and psychological principles. The field seeks to develop and understand ways of expanding the emotional connection between individuals and the natural world, thereby assisting people with developing sustainable lifestyles and remedying alienation from nature. 3. This subfield extends beyond the traditional built environment of psychology in order to examine why people continue environmentally damagingbehaviour , and to develop methods of positive motivation for adopting sustainable practices. Evidence suggests that many environmentally damagingbehaviours are addictive at some level, and thus are more effectively addressed through positive emotional fulfillment rather than by inflicting shame. Other names used to refer toecopsychology include, Gaia psychology,psychoecology ,ecotherapy , environmental psychology, green psychology, global therapy, green therapy, Earth-centered therapy, re-earthing, nature-based psychotherapy, shamanic counselling,ecosophy , and sylvan therapy. 4. The main premise ofecopsychology is that while today the human mind is shaped by the modern social world, it is adapted to the natural environment in which it evolved. According to the biophilia hypothesis of biologist E.O. Wilson, human beingshave an innate instinct to connect emotionally with nature, particularly the aspects of nature that recall what evolutionary psychologists have termed the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness; the natural conditions that the human species evolved to inhabit. 5. Connection to nature can improve interpersonal relationships, emotional wellbeing, sharpen the senses, and help cultivate new skills. 6. Earthing Canada 7. EARTH HEALTH
- Vulnerability: Brené Brown describes vulnerability as the core of all emotions. She defines vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. To feel is to be vulnerable, she says. But being vulnerable connects us with others. It opens us up to love, joy, creativity, and empathy. Brené Brown
- Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strengths. Sigmund Freud
- Ordinary courage involves facing a difficulty or conflict. It means being mindful. It involves learning and evolving in character and social graces. It means making healthier choices.
DO YOU KNOW?
The Importance of The Heart - Brain Connection in Learning
Social and emotional learning changes brain structure and function, gene expression and promotes adaptive emotional and cognitive functioning.
Tears of Joy
Tears of sadness have a different chemical composition than tears of joy or those caused by irritants.
Joseph Stromberg, of the Smithsonian College of Arts and Sciences, explains that scientifically speaking, there are three types of tears: basal tears that are released continuously in small quantities to keep the eye lubricated, reflex tears that are secreted when the eye is irritated by foreign particles like sand or onionvapours , and psychic tears from crying or weeping due to strong emotions, both positive and negative.
Joseph Stromberg, of the Smithsonian College of Arts and Sciences, explains that scientifically speaking, there are three types of tears: basal tears that are released continuously in small quantities to keep the eye lubricated, reflex tears that are secreted when the eye is irritated by foreign particles like sand or onion
Rose-Lynn Fisher:
Typography of Tears
photographs of magnified, dried tears
pictured : Basal Tears
All tears are mainly composed of water and salts, with accompanying biological substances like antibodies and antibacterial enzymes. According to studies, the composition of emotional or psychic tears are different than those caused by eye irritants. For example, emotional tears have more protein-based hormones.
Onion Tears
Some of that may explain the differences in the photos of tears by photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher, but the crystallization of salt is highly dependent on a variety of factors; the same emotional tears may crystallize into vastly different shapes and formations under slightly different circumstances.
Tears of Elation at a Liminal Moment
Rose-Lynn Fisher: The Topography of Tears is a study of 100 tears photographed through a light microscope, magnified 100x or 400x.
Lachrymatory
A Lachrymatory or tear vial is a small vessel of terra-cotta or glass. They have been found in late Roman and Greek tombs and reappeared during the Victorian era. These bottles were used with special stoppers and the mourners would collect their tears and mourn until the tears evaporated, thus showing the end of the mourning period.
An Important Mind Game For Well Being
Our unique sense of humour relieves stress, keeps us fit and helps us to enjoy a long, happy life.
Scientists are beginning to take humour seriously. Margery Hutter Silver, a Neuropsychologist at The Harvard Medical School, studied longevity and found one common factor emerged in those who live past 100 - a sense of humour . Dr Hutter speculates that a sense of humour contributes to aging well because smiling and laughing provide the same benefits as exercise - she refers to laughing as internal jogging.
Laughter raises blood pressure just long enough to increase oxygen and blood supply to tissues. It alters the breathing cycle so that more oxygen is inhaled and toxic carbon dioxide exhaled. Muscles throughout the body tense and relax during laughter in exactly the same way as with stress reduction techniques such as yoga.
Herbert Lefcourt and colleagues at Waterloo University in Ontario recently established that exposure to humour improves immune system functioning, producing significant rises in the body's natural defenses, such as antibodies in the bloodstream.
Low antibody levels predict greater likelihood of future disease, yet what was particularly intriguing about Dr. Lefcourt's study was that, given something to laugh at, those with a good sense of humour experienced the highest rises in antibody levels.
The ability of a good sense of humour to help cope with stress is now regarded as one of the most powerful defense mechanisms for dealing with problems over which you can do little.
Recent research has also established that electrical brainwave patterns of the right and left hemisphere tend to co-ordinate more when we experience humour . This is important because evidence shows that depression is accompanied by less co-ordination in brainwave patterns between the two sides.
What is particularly fascinating about the latest discoveries is that they confirm some of the oldest ideas about humour .
Freud, who wrote one of the most unfunny books in the English Language, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, believed humour was a mechanism for anxiety release because a joke always has two halves. The first builds up psychic tension which is then broken by the ridiculous punchline . We are therefore allowed to release bottled up unease safely in a burst of laughter.
But the punchline has to resolve the tension it sets up successfully and surprisingly - in other words, all jokes are really problems that have a clever but unexpected answer.
Modern neurologists have found damage to the right brain - the emotional hemisphere - leads to acceptance of any incongruity as funny - sufferers laugh too much and often inappropriately.
Meanwhile, damage to the left brain - the logical, analytical hemisphere - leads to an inability to understand the incongruity in a joke - producing too much seriousness.
This would suggest that humour is produced in the brain when the left hemisphere recognizes the incongruity in a joke while the right hemisphere - better at understanding the big picture rather than logical detail - resolves the anomaly. In other words the left cortex sets up the joke and the right gets it.
Dr. Peter Derks, a psychologist at William and Mary College in Virginia, has found that electrical brainwave patterns confirming the brain has picked up an incongruity are vital for us to find a joke funny.
The latest brain scanning technology, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI ), is able accurately to localize brain activity. Research using fMRI is revealing where the humour centre in the brain is. The frontal part of the right brain becomes most active when a punchline arrives. Previously the right frontal lobe has been considered the most silent of brain areas. Now it would appear that it is the most important. The right frontal lobe is unique in the brain as an area that serves as a connecting point between different parts that might otherwise remain isolated. For example, the frontal lobe is strongly connected with the deeper inner parts linked to the experience of emotions - called the limbic system - and the parts associated with emotional expression, the temporal and frontal lobes.
The part of the brain linked to problem solving is the frontal lobe itself. It was not until scientists began to study humour that the right frontal lobe's importance emerged. Humour requires a unique integration of problem solving, emotional appreciation and expressive functions, and it was here that it came into its own. Integrating emotion and cognition, as we must to laugh, can only occur because of the ability of the brain to produce consciousness.
Daydreaming
Letting your mind wander is not a waste of time - a different kind of thinking occurs. When you aren't deliberately trying to solve a problem and you let your mind go where it wants to go; it gives the brain a chance to stop focusing on immediate tasks; provides more mental space; improves thinking; makes novel connections; brings more mental resources to complex problem-solving; develops ideas; consolidates learning; allows the subconscious to resolve important life problems faster, and can even help maintain progress toward long-term goals.
Professor Kalina Christoff of the University of British Columbia Cognitive Neuroscience of Thought Laboratory, who studies
Some progressive corporations, businesses and science labs have daydream rooms and are encouraging their employees and scientists to use daydreaming to find solutions, and to generate creative ideas.
Mindfulness Meditation
A state of calm awareness of your present experience, including sensations, thoughts, feelings, breathing, and surroundings with an attitude of non-resistance, peace and acceptance describes the state of mindful awareness made possible with meditation.
Mindfulness meditation engenders faith in the perfection of the moment and allows each experience to be felt fully without our reactive, self-critical and controlling mind.
Mindfulness meditation is very beneficial to decrease stress, boost immune system function, and to alleviate a variety of mental and physical conditions including obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety, and to prevent relapse in cases of depression and addiction.
Mindfulness meditation is very beneficial to decrease stress, boost immune system function, and to alleviate a variety of mental and physical conditions including obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety, and to prevent relapse in cases of depression and addiction.
Mindfulness and Habit
Mindfulness de-automatizes habits, and shines a light on habit triggers. It allows us to observe how a habit operates. When the prefrontal cortex responsible for decision making is overloaded by chronic stress and fatigue, your resolve and best intentions are likely to succumb to emotional desire for instant gratification. Mindfulness allows us to take a step back from the influence of stress and is an antidote to stress; giving us the room needed to change our responses, choices, and finally, we can replace the dysfunctional habit with something that works better for us.
Research by Shelley Gable and Jonathan Haidt have identified two main tendencies that keep us from experiencing, extending, and expanding our joy: the negativity bias and habituation.
For most of evolution, the focus has been on basic survival and this explains our mind's innate tendency to give more weight to the negative; we tend to remember and focus more on negative experiences; while positive experiences are reduced in effect with repetition.
A number of studies have shown that making daily lists of the things you feel grateful for – which helps draw our attention to the positive experiences in our lives – improves our psychological and physical health and well-being. Gratitude improves our ability to connect with others, boosts our altruistic tendencies, make us optimistic and happier, decreases envy and materialism and even improves health for people with physical ailments.
A recent study by Nathaniel Lambert and colleagues at Brigham Young University, however, extends research on gratitude to show that verbally expressing the gratitude we feel to people close to us helps increase and sustain our well-being above and beyond simply feeling or writing down gratitude. Sharing our joy increases joy.
Telling people about our happiness has far greater benefits than just remembering it or writing it down for ourselves. This research may also help partially explain research by Nicholas Kristakis and James Fowler that has shown that our well-being influences the wellbeing of those around us, up to 3 levels of separation. To try and be happy, may seem like a selfish endeavour but it is actually a worthwhile goal to pursue not just for oneself but for your community.
The dopaminergic mind hypothesis seeks to explain the difference between modern humans and their hominid relatives by focusing on changes in dopamine. It theorizes that increased levels of dopamine as part of a general physiological adaption due to an increased consumption of meat around 2 million years ago by humans and later enhanced by changes in diet and other environmental and social factors, beginning approximately 80,000 years ago explains this difference.
The high dopamine personality is characterized by high intelligence, a sense of personal destiny, a religious/cosmic preoccupation, an obsession with achieving goals and conquests, and emotional detachment that in many cases leads to ruthlessness and risk-taking mentality.
High levels of dopamine are proposed to underlie psychological disorders in industrialized societies, accordingly a dopaminergic society is an extremely goal-oriented, fast-paced and even manic society; dopamine is known to speed up our internal clocks and create a preference for novel over unchanging environments. In the same way that high dopamine individuals lack empathy and exhibit a more masculine behavioural style, the dopaminergic society is typified by more conquest, competition and aggression rather than nurturance and communality .
The Next Evolutionary Stage
Personal evolution through social-emotional learning.
Creating a more compassionate and empathetic society
Evolution operates through hindsight; that is, it custom fits us to the environment we were in, with no anticipation or prediction. Having an impulsive mindset made a lot of sense when we were hunter-gatherers. In the environment where we evolved, we drank when thirsty, ate when hungry, and worked when motivated. We are hardwired for a wild and lawless, natural environment, not for the demanding social environments created by people that make up our world today. Socially, our behaviour is stalled in the egocentric adolescent phase of development.
One of the most valuable lessons that I have learned in my 38 year career as a health professional, and as a researcher, is that all of the important skills for a healthy, successful, and happy life, are learnedbehaviours . Like all learned skills, some people will be more adept and accomplished, but this does not lessen the fact that these skills must be deliberately modelled, taught, and learned. The humane treatment of all living beings, including our natural environment, give us lots of examples and opportunities.
One of the most valuable lessons that I have learned in my 38 year career as a health professional, and as a researcher, is that all of the important skills for a healthy, successful, and happy life, are learned
Gradualism, Techno-Physio Evolution, and Neo-Evolution
Evolution is basically descent with modification. The pace of human evolution has proceeded slowly and steadily, with any rapid change (10K -100K years) being caused by natural factors.
François Jacob described evolution as a tinkerer, not an engineer. It has proceeded without a reasonable master plan or goal.
François Jacob described evolution as a tinkerer, not an engineer. It has proceeded without a reasonable master plan or goal.
Over the past few centuries, and accelerating ever more quickly in the past 50 years, a steady stream of human innovations has begun to drastically speed up processes that were, until very recently, the sole province of nature.
Height and body mass are accurate indicators of health and mortality and are mainly the result of improvements in hygiene and nutrition, as well as technological developments that have accelerated rates of longevity globally. Artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, biology, genetic modification, robotics, networks, and sensors have the capacity to advance techno-physio evolution. Techno-physio evolution shows how increased control over our external environment impacts our biology. Culture and technology are replacing catastrophe and modifying natural selection as the forces driving human evolution, and at a rapid and accelerated pace.
Play these patterns forward, and we aren’t longfrom the day when we’re engineering our children: choosing skin color, eye color, personality traits. How long after that until parents are saying, I bought you the best brain money can buy-now why don’t you use it. Discover Magazine
Creating a genetic master race is not as straight forward as it seems and is rife with complications and opportunities for surprise and disaster.
I Trust You. Do You Trust Me?
Social HUG ME Experiment In Istanbul
Credit
Spring Awakening by Catrin Welz-Stein
Paper Heart by Lee Crutchley
Daydreaming by Aneta Ivanova
Mindfulness byKarmomo
don't forget to play by Marc Johns
Unborn Ideas by Catrin Welz-Stein
Happiness is a form of courage. - George Holbrook Jackson
Paper Heart by Lee Crutchley
Daydreaming by Aneta Ivanova
Mindfulness by
Unborn Ideas by Catrin Welz-Stein
Happiness is a form of courage. - George Holbrook Jackson
I am always searching online for articles that can help me. There is obviously a lot to know about this. I think you made some good points in Features also. Keep working, great job!
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