Author Archives: RichardB

Some Yoga Benefits

03 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Wellness, Yoga

≈ Comments Off on Some Yoga Benefits

Tags

,

Many people hear “yoga”, and think Zen gardens, meditation, and free spirits. But you may be surprised to find that one recent study showed that those who incorporated yoga into their life had improved stress levels and lower blood pressure. Yoga was ultimately developed to combine controlled breathing and poses to achieve physical, mental, and spiritual strength and unity. In fact, Michelle Obama even attributes her sleek physique to frequent yoga sessions. There are multiple types of yoga, but Hatha Yoga is the most commonly practiced type in the United States. 

Woman Stretching

Here are some surprising health benefits of practicing yoga that you may have never known!

Relief of Back Pain: More than 60 million Americans suffer from chronic back pain. Yoga is one of the best exercises to help alleviate pain. This is due to the increase in core stability (abdominal muscles) and the reduction of pressure across the lower back and surrounding muscles. Yoga also helps to release endorphins throughout the body that can calm inflammation. Practicing yoga for just two sessions a week may reduce or even eliminate back pain. Many individuals also report an increase in pain tolerance after attending sessions for only three weeks.

Heart Healthy: Further research also demonstrates that even one yoga session can produce a calming effect on the body, and individuals in one study showed reduction in their systolic blood pressure after only 12 weeks of two yoga sessions per week. Additionally, incorporating yoga into a cardiac rehabilitation program after a heart attack or bypass surgery has also shown promise in maintaining lower levels of stress and healthy blood pressure levels.

Increased Flexibility: You may be thinking, “No Duh”, on this one, but the benefits may be surprising. Practicing poses like downward dog, and tree pose can improve balance and flexibility. This can directly strengthen and protect your larger joints (knees, hips, back, neck) from injury and reduce inflammation in the smaller joints (fingers and ankles). This can also help reduce falls in the elderly, and ultimately avoid fractures in this age group.

Mood Booster: In addition to mental clarity and relaxation, yoga has been shown to improve depression, anxiety, and chronic stress. A small German study reviewed in theHarvard Mental Health Letter demonstrated that at the end of a three-month period, women perceived less stress, depression, anxiety, and fatigue. A few yoga classes could leave you happier and less stressed. Increased happiness alone is reason enough to give it a try!

As with any new exercise, always consult your physician before you begin. This is to ensure your body can safely complete the activity. I also recommend you attend a beginner class or view a video with some common poses. This will make you feel more confident during your first class and ensure you obtain the most benefit.

Photos

03 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by in art, My Photos, photo

≈ Comments Off on Photos

I am a Creative Arts Therapist who has been using a digital a camera for the last 5 years or so. As a relatively new photographer I use my life experience coupled with the advantages of a DSLR to snap shots that are, at times, appealing to me and on occasion others as well. Luckily, since I don’t use film, I have been able to afford to shot ten of thousands of images in the last 10 years, some of which are here. Click image to enlarge.

DSC02487-TR.jpgDSC02463-TR.jpgDSC03064-TR.jpg

Scientist Seeks Neural And Biological Basis For Creativity, Beauty And Love

02 Tuesday Jul 2019

Posted by in brain, research

≈ Comments Off on Scientist Seeks Neural And Biological Basis For Creativity, Beauty And Love

One of the world’s leading neuroscientists is to search for the neural and biological basis for creativity, beauty and love after receiving over £1 million from the Wellcome Trust, the UK’s largest medical research charity. The research will bring together science, the arts and philosophy to answer fundamental questions about what it means to be human. 

Professor Semir Zeki from University College London (UCL) has received a Wellcome Trust Strategic Award to establish a programme of research in the new field of “neuroaesthetics”. The research will build on his previous work into the neural mechanisms behind beauty and love. 

Together with Professor Ray Dolan, Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL, Professor Zeki will look at questions that have been debated for millennia by writers, artists and philosophers and yet have been little studied by neurobiologists: Can we measure beauty objectively” How are beauty and love related” What does it mean to be happy” 

“All human societies place a high premium on art and the pursuit of beauty,” says Professor Zeki. “We all value and reward creativity. We all want to pursue happiness. But what do these entities mean in concrete, neurobiological terms” We hope to address these issues experimentally. The results will not only increase our knowledge about the workings of the human brain but will also give deep insights into human nature and how we view ourselves.” 

Neuroesthetics aims to illuminate the brain’s workings through its cultural products in a similar way to how neuroscientists study the brain through malfunctions caused by disease. However, Professor Zeki believes its impact may be much wider. 

“The new field of neuroaesthetics will teach biologists to use the products of the brain in art, music, literature and mathematics to better understand how the brain functions,” he says. “Success will encourage an interdisciplinary approach to other fields, such as the study of economics or jurisprudence in terms of brain activity. This will have a deep impact on social issues.” 

Using Wellcome Trust funding, Professor Zeki hopes to attract students and researchers from the sciences, arts and humanities in truly interdisciplinary research. Their work will be overseen by an Advisory Board that will include author AS Byatt, physician, opera producer and broadcaster Sir Jonathan Miller and Dr. Deborah Swallow, Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. 

“Professor Zeki is a Renaissance Man for the twenty-first century,” says Professor Richard Morris, Head of Neurosciences and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust. “His research sees no boundaries between science and the arts and humanities and will provide an exciting insight in issues that strike at the heart of what it is to be human.” 

live

27 Thursday Jun 2019

Posted by in live

≈ Comments Off on live

“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.” Richard Rohr, from Everything Belongs

msclip-029

Meditation Reduces Anxiety

26 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by in art, Meditation, mindfulness

≈ Comments Off on Meditation Reduces Anxiety

Tags

,

Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have identified the brain functions involved in how meditation reduces anxiety. feelings-16.jpg

The team wrote in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience about how they studied 15 healthy volunteers with normal levels of everyday anxiety. They said these individuals had no previous meditation experience or anxiety disorders.

The participants took four 20-minute classes to learn a technique known as mindfulness meditation. In this form of meditation, people are taught to focus on breath and body sensations and to non-judgmentally evaluate distracting thoughts and emotions.

“Although we´ve known that meditation can reduce anxiety, we hadn´t identified the specific brain mechanisms involved in relieving anxiety in healthy individuals,” said Dr. Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., postdoctoral research fellow in neurobiology and anatomy at Wake Forest Baptist and lead author of the study. “In this study, we were able to see which areas of the brain were activated and which were deactivated during meditation-related anxiety relief.”

The researchers found that meditation reduced anxiety ratings by as much as 39 percent in the participants.

“This showed that just a few minutes of mindfulness meditation can help reduce normal everyday anxiety,” Zeidan said.

Fadel and colleagues were also able to reveal that meditation-related anxiety relief is associated with activation of the anterior cingulate cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which are areas of the brain involved with executive-level function.

“Mindfulness is premised on sustaining attention in the present moment and controlling the way we react to daily thoughts and feelings,” Zeidan said. “Interestingly, the present findings reveal that the brain regions associated with meditation-related anxiety relief are remarkably consistent with the principles of being mindful.”

He said the results of this neuroimaging experiment complement that body of knowledge by showing the brain mechanisms associated with meditation-related anxiety relief in healthy people.

feelings-40.jpgScientists wrote in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in November 2012 about how meditation has lasting emotional benefits. They found that participating in an eight-week meditation training program could have measurable effects on how the brain functions, even when someone is not actively meditating. The team used two forms of meditation training and saw some differences in the response of the amygdala, which is the part of the brain known to be important for emotion.

Art therapy brings comfort to Jordan’s orphans

25 Tuesday Jun 2019

Posted by in Art Therapy, kids

≈ Comments Off on Art therapy brings comfort to Jordan’s orphans

After a busy art session, the classroom at Amman’s al-Hussain Social Institution buzzed with energy, as children dashed around to clean up supplies, admire their paintings and pose in the decorated masks they designed.
These young artists have come a long way over the past few months. Aged between six and 12, the children recently completed an art therapy programme – the first of its kind – designed to aid Jordan’s orphans. The weekly sessions of painting, gluing and building provided an atmosphere of organised chaos, during which they filled canvases with the anxieties and hopes that might otherwise be difficult to express. 
“It’s like regular therapy, except you use art as a medium,” art therapist and programme founder Shireen Yaish told Al Jazeera. “It’s great for those who find it difficult to verbalise things – it’s about making the unconscious conscious, in a way. My job is to make people understand what they’re making.”
As the weeks progressed, the children participating in this programme run by the Kaynouna Art Therapy Centre came out of their shells and developed great enthusiasm for their artwork, Yaish said. Supported by the al-Aman Fund for the Future of Orphans and the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation, the programme also exposed the profound needs of some of Jordan’s most vulnerable children. MORE HERE

heart disease & drinking

21 Friday Jun 2019

Posted by in Addiction, alcohol, drinking

≈ Comments Off on heart disease & drinking

Tags

Can you drink if you have heart disease? Moderate drinking should be OK, if your doctor approves, but you shouldn’t count on alcohol to be a major part of your heart health plan.

“If you don’t drink alcohol now, there is no reason to start,” says Mark Urman, MD, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles.

It’s true that there have been studies linking drinking small amounts of alcohol — no more than two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women — to better heart health.

But the exact link isn’t clear. Those studies don’t prove that the alcohol (whether it was wine, beer, or liquor) was the only thing that mattered.

Other lifestyle habits could have been involved, the American Heart Association notes. Or the important thing could have been nutrients that are in grapes, which you can get from the grapes themselves, without drinking wine.

“One drink a day is probably healthy for people with heart disease and those without it,” says James Beckerman, MD, a cardiologist at Providence St. Vincent Heart Clinic Cardiology in Portland, OR.

But whether or not you drink, you also need to keep the rest of your diet healthy, not smoke, and get regular exercise. Read More.