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  • Seguy Art Deco Designs 115

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  • Cedar Waxwing Coloring Page

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  • the mistakes of others

    “You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.”  Sam Levenson

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  • ourselves

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

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  • Grounding

    Grounding Techniques are activities you use when you feel overwhelmed by feelings, thoughts, sensations. These techniques help a person move their focus away from what is overwhelming them to something else. That something else is preferable healthy and supportive to their wellbeing. Below is a list that clients and patients have mentioned over the years of things they do that help them ground.

    • Get ice or ice water
    • Breathe – slow and deep, like blowing up a balloon.
    • Take your shoes off and rub your feet on the ground.
    • Open your eyes and look around. See yourself in a different place than.
    • Move around. Feel your body. Stretch out your arms, hands, fingers.
    • Peel an orange or a lemon. Notice the smell. Take a bite. Focus on the taste.
    • Pet your cat, dog or rabbit.
    • Spray yourself with favorite perfume.
    • Eat ice cream! Or any favorite food. Pay attention to the taste.
    • Call a friend.
    • Take a shower.
    • Take a bath.
    • Go for a walk. Feel the sunshine (or rain, or snow!)
    • Count nice things.
    • Dig in the dirt in your garden.
    • Turn lights on.
    • Play your favorite music.
    • Hug a tree!
    • Touch things around you.
    • Frozen Orange – put your nails into it – the cold and the smell can bring you back
    • Pull up the daily newspaper on your browser. Notice the date and read a current article.
    • Stomp your feet to remind yourself where you are. Press your feet firmly into the ground.
    • Try to notice where you are, your surroundings including people, sounds like the t.v. or radio.
    • Concentrate on your breathing. Take a deep cleansing breath from your diaphragm. Count the breaths as you exhale. Make sure you breath slowly so you don’t hyperventilate.
    • Cross your legs and arms. Feel the sensations of you controlling your body.
    • Call a friend and ask them to talk with you about something you have recently done together.
    • Take a warm relaxing bubble bath or a warm shower. Feel the water touching your body.
    • Mentally remind yourself that the memory was then, and it is over. Give yourself permission to not think about it right now.
    • Realize that no matter how small you feel, you are an adult.
    • Go outside and sit against a tree. Feel the bark pressing against your body. Smell the outside aromas like the grass and the leaves. Run your fingers through the grass.
    • If you are sitting, stand. If you are standing sit. Pay attention to the movement change. Reminding yourself — you are in control.
    • Rub your palms, clap your hands. Listen to the sounds. Feel the sensation.
    • Speak out loud. Say your name or significant others name.
    • Hold something that you find comforting, for some it may be a stuffed animal or a blanket. Notice how it feels in your hands. Is it hard or soft?
    • Eat something. How does it taste, sweet or sour? Is it warm or cold?
    • If you have a pet use that moment to touch them. Feel their fur and speak the animals name out loud.
    • Visualize a bright red STOP sign to help you stop the flashback and/or memory
    • Step outside. If it’s warm, feel the sun shining down on your face. If it’s cold, feel the breeze. How does it make your body feel?
    • Take a walk outside and notice your neighborhood. Pay attention to houses and count them.
    • Listen to familiar music and sing along to it. Dance to it.
    • Write in your journal. Pay attention to yourself holding the pencil. Write about what you are remembering and visualize the memory traveling out of you into the pencil and onto the paper. Tear the paper up or seal it in an envelope. Give it to your therapist for safekeeping.
    • Go online and talk with an online friend. Write an email.
    • Imagine yourself in a safe place. Feel the safety and know it.
    • Watch a favorite t.v. program or video. Play a video game.
    • If you have a garden, work in it. Feel your hands running through the dirt.
    • Wash dishes or clean your house.
    • Meditate if you are comfortable with it.
    • Exercise. Ride a bike, stationary or otherwise. Lift weights. Do jumping jacks.
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  • creative thinking

    When the task at hand requires some imagination, taking a walk may lead to more creative thinking than sitting, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
    “Many people anecdotally claim they do their best thinking when walking,” said Marily Oppezzo, PhD, of Santa Clara University. “With this study, we finally may be taking a step or two toward discovering why.”
    While at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, Oppezzo and colleague Daniel L. Schwartz, PhD, conducted studies involving 176 people, mostly college students. They found that those who walked instead of sitting or being pushed in a wheelchair consistently gave more creative responses on tests commonly used to measure creative thinking, such as thinking of alternate uses for common objects and coming up with original analogies to capture complex ideas. When asked to solve problems with a single answer, however, the walkers fell slightly behind those who responded while sitting, according to the study published in APA’s Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition.
    While previous research has shown that regular aerobic exercise may protect cognitive abilities, these

    researchers examined whether simply walking could temporarily improve some types of thinking, such as free-flowing thought compared to focused concentration. “Asking someone to take a 30-minute run to improve creativity at work would be an unpopular prescription for many people,” Schwartz said. “We wanted to see if a simple walk might lead to more free-flowing thoughts and more creativity.”

    Of the students tested for creativity while walking, 100 percent came up with more creative ideas in one experiment, while 95 percent, 88 percent and 81 percent of the walker groups in the other experiments had more creative responses compared with when they were sitting. If a response was unique among all responses from the group, it was considered novel. Researchers also gauged a participant’s total number of responses and whether a response was feasible and appropriate to the constraints of the task. For example, “Putting lighter fluid in soup is novel, but it is not very appropriate,” Oppezzo said.
    In one experiment with 48 participants, each student sat alone in a small room at a desk facing a blank wall. When a researcher named an object, the student came up with alternative ways to use the object. For example, for the word “button,” a person might say “as a doorknob on a dollhouse.” The students heard two sets of three words and had four minutes per set to come up with as many responses as possible. To see how walking might affect more restricted thinking, the researchers also had the students complete a word association task with 15 three-word groups, such as “cottage-Swiss-cake,” for which the correct answer is “cheese.” Participants repeated both tasks with different sets of words first while sitting and then while walking at a comfortable pace on a treadmill facing a blank wall in the same room.
    With a different group of 48 students, some sat for two different sets of the tests, some walked during two sets of the test and some walked and then sat for the tests. “This confirmed that the effect of walking during the second test set was not due to practice,” Oppezzo said. “Participants came up with fewer novel ideas when they sat for the second test set after walking during the first. However, they did perform better than the participants who sat for both sets of tests, so there was a residual effect of walking on creativity when people sat down afterward. Walking before a meeting that requires innovation may still be nearly as useful as walking during the meeting.”
    Students who walked in another experiment doubled their number of novel responses compared with when they were sitting. The 40 students in this experiment were divided into three groups: One sat for two sets of tests but moved to separate rooms for each set; another sat and then walked on a treadmill; and one group walked outdoors along a predetermined path.
    To see if walking was the source of creative inspiration rather than being outdoors, another experiment with 40 participants compared responses of students walking outside or inside on a treadmill with the responses of students being pushed in a wheelchair outside and sitting inside. Again, the students who walked, whether indoors or outside, came up with more creative responses than those either sitting inside or being pushed in a wheelchair outdoors. “While being outdoors has many cognitive benefits, walking appears to have a very specific benefit of improving creativity,” said Oppezzo.
    More research will be necessary to explain how walking improves creativity, the authors said. They speculated that future studies would likely determine a complex pathway that extends from the physical act of walking to physiological changes to the cognitive control of imagination. “Incorporating physical activity into our lives is not only beneficial for our hearts but our brains as well. This research suggests an easy and productive way to weave it into certain work activities,” Oppezzo said.

     

    Marily Oppezzo, Daniel L. Schwartz. Give your ideas some legs: The positive effect of walking on creative thinking.. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2014; DOI:

  • The mindful way through depression

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  • Research as a graphic novel

    Research as a graphic novel or is it a graphic novel as research. Interesting article from The London School of Economics Impact of Social Sciences blog.

    What would be a novel way of engaging people more people with research findings? Academics are wondering if traditional journal articles are still fit for purpose or if an injection of creativity is needed. Go to original post here.

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  • TEDx:The Practice of Mindfulness

    Former Buddhist nun Diana Winston is the director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA Mindful Awareness Center, and the author of several books on mindfulness and meditation. With more than 20 years in the study and practice of mindfulness, Diana explains how routinely taking the time to be in the moment can have a profound impact on our everyday lives and relationships.

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  • Lou Doillon – Nothings

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