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  • Stress Management Strategy #5

    Make time for fun and relaxation

    Beyond a take-charge approach and a positive attitude, you can reduce stress in your life by nurturing yourself. If you regularly make time for fun and relaxation, you’ll be in a better place to handle life’s stressors when they inevitably come.

    Don’t get so caught up in the hustle and bustle of life that you forget to take care of your own needs. Nurturing yourself is a necessity, not a luxury.

    • Set aside relaxation time. Include rest and relaxation in your daily schedule. Don’t allow other obligations to encroach. This is your time to take a break from all responsibilities and recharge your batteries.
    • Connect with others. Spend time with positive people who enhance your life. A strong support system will buffer you from the negative effects of stress.
    • Do something you enjoy every day. Make time for leisure activities that bring you joy, whether it be stargazing, playing the piano, or working on your bike.
    • Keep your sense of humor. This includes the ability to laugh at yourself. The act of laughing helps your body fight stress in a number of ways.

    Learn the relaxation response

    You can control your stress levels with relaxation techniques that evoke the body’s relaxation response, a state of restfulness that is the opposite of the stress response. Regularly practicing these techniques will build your physical and emotional resilience, heal your body, and boost your overall feelings of joy and equanimity.

    There as many ways to reduce stress as there are stars. I use and recommend that people engage a variety of healthy coping and preemptive stress reducing techniques.

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  • Left or Forward?

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  • Top Songs I listened to in 2022: Leon Bridges – Steam

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  • Mayo Clinic Minute – Three things to remember when using Narcan in an emergency

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved over-the-counter (OTC) sales of Emergent BioSolutions Inc’s (EBS.N) Narcan, allowing for easier availability of the life-saving medication used to reverse opioid overdoses.

    The formal decision makes Narcan the first naloxone-based drug available without a prescription.

    Emergent said it will make Narcan available on U.S. store shelves and online retailers by late summer.

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  • Researchers pinpoint brain’s happiness region

    Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence,” the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle once said. But how does one reach this goal? According to a new study by researchers from Japan, a person’s happiness may depend on the size of a specific brain region.

    Researchers found people who were happier had larger gray matter volume in the precuneus region of the brain.

    Study leader Dr. Wataru Sato, of Kyoto University in Japan, and colleagues publish their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.

    The definition of happiness has been debated for centuries. In recent years, psychologists have suggested that happiness is a combination of life satisfaction and the experience of more positive than negative emotions – collectively deemed “subjective well-being.”

    But according to Dr. Sato and his colleagues, the neurological mechanisms behind a person’s happiness were unclear.

    “To date, no structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) investigation of the construct has been conducted,” they note.

    “Identification of the neural substrates underlying subjective happiness may provide a complementary objective measure for this subjective construct and insight into its information-processing mechanism.”

    Meditation may boost happiness by targeting precuneus brain region

    To address this research gap, the team used MRI to scan the brains of 51 study participants.

    After the scans, subjects were asked to complete three short questionnaires that asked them how satisfied they are with their lives, how happy they are and how intensely they feel positive and negative emotions.

    The researchers found that individuals who had higher happiness scores had larger gray matter volume in the precuneus of the brain – a region in the medial parietal lobe that plays a role in self-reflection and certain aspects of consciousness – than their unhappy counterparts.

    What is more, the researchers found that one’s happiness may be driven by a combination of greater life satisfaction and intensity of positive emotion – supporting the theory of subjective well-being.

    “These results indicate that the widely accepted psychological model postulating emotional and cognitive components of subjective happiness may be applicable at the level of neural structure,” they add.

    These findings, the researchers say, indicate that individuals may be able to boost their happiness through practices that target the precuneus, such as meditation:

    “Previous structural neuroimaging studies have shown that training in psychological activities, such as meditation, changed the structure of the precuneus gray matter.

    Together with these findings, our results suggest that psychological training that effectively increases gray matter volume in the precuneus may enhance subjective happiness.”

    Dr. Sato adds that, while further research is required, these current findings may be useful for developing psychological programs that boost a person’s happiness

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  • Top Songs I listened to in 2022: Yaeji & OHHYUK – 29

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  • MIT: The art of the two-way art: Palindrome

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  • Stress management strategy #4

    Accept the things you can’t change

    Some sources of stress are unavoidable. You can’t prevent or change stressors such as the death of a loved one, a serious illness, or a national recession. In such cases, the best way to cope with stress is to accept things as they are. Acceptance may be difficult, but in the long run, it’s easier than railing against a situation you can’t change.

    • Don’t try to control the uncontrollable. Many things in life are beyond our control— particularly the behavior of other people. Rather than stressing out over them, focus on the things you can control such as the way you choose to react to problems.
    • Look for the upside. As the saying goes, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” When facing major challenges, try to look at them as opportunities for personal growth. If your own poor choices contributed to a stressful situation, reflect on them and learn from your mistakes.
    • Share your feelings. Talk to a trusted friend or make an appointment with a therapist. Expressing what you’re going through can be very cathartic, even if there’s nothing you can do to alter the stressful situation.
    • Learn to forgive. Accept the fact that we live in an imperfect world and that people make mistakes. Let go of anger and resentments. Free yourself from negative energy by forgiving and moving on.

    There as many ways to reduce stress as there are stars. I use and recommend that people engage a variety of healthy coping and preemptive stress reducing techniques.

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  • truest expression

    The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie. ~Agnes de Mille

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  • Watch These moms share joys and fears about parenting with a disability |CBC

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