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Health and happiness

March 13, 2014 by bobleckridge

What’s the connection between health and happiness?

Well, from what I can see from the studies I’ve read there is definitely a correlation – in other words, they often go together. But the exact nature of the connection is complex. For example, it’s pretty much common sense to think that when you’re sick you’re not happy, and when you’re feeling healthy, you are more likely to be feeling happy. But then there are thousands of people with long term ill health who experience happiness frequently, and there are plenty of happy people who get sick!

However, what I find really interesting when thinking about health and happiness, is that the activities and practices which are conducive to good health are also the ones which are most likely to make you happy.

I referred to the graphic below in a previous post about happiness, but let’s take another look.

2013_HappinessMatrix

 

Think about the characteristics of those who live in the “blue zones“, those areas where a high percentage of people live to a 100 and beyond. Remember the “power 9”?

Well, look at that chart above and see the references to movement – walking, strolling in the park, going for a run; and the ones about “down time” – take a nap, enjoy a cup of tea, meditate. And those about connecting to others – acts of kindness, volunteering, praying and sex!

There’s a lot of evidence about the importance of a Mediterranean diet and good health, and who isn’t happy on vacation on the Med?? And there are the references above to gratitude, smiling, laughing, music and play (and in fact there is a lot of evidence about “positive emotions” like these, and both reduced levels of heart disease, and better recovery from heart attacks and strokes.

So, on a day to day basis, there is plenty you can do to increase your chances of health AND happiness!

Posted in from the consulting room, from the living room, health, life | 1 Comment »

Good health

March 12, 2014 by bobleckridge

mitsudomo

Dan Siegel defines the mind as “an embodied process of regulation of energy and information flow”.

Flow is such an attractive and useful concept. If you’d like to read more about it start here.

I like Dan’s definition of the mind because he refuses to turn it into a measurable, objective entity. He describes it as a process – which seems so much more accurate to me. It is a continuous, dynamic, ever changing phenomenon. Not only is it a process however, it’s a process of regulation. He says it regulates energy and information flow.

I think this concept of the mind can be extrapolated to cover the whole organism. Whatever it is that self-regulates, self-defends, self-repairs (in my opinion we can usefully call it “the vital force”) is a process of regulation of energy, information AND materials. Because that’s how all our cells communicate and co-operate – by exchanging energy, information and materials.

So, let’s just consider another of Dan’s concepts. He defines a healthy flow of regulation as having five qualities which he remembers with the acronym FACES.

  • Flexible
  • Adaptive
  • Coherent
  • Energised
  • Stable

A healthy organism has flexibility. Rigidity is one of the two main patterns of dis-order and dis-ease. It uses that flexibility to be adaptive. In other words, as the world changes around it, the healthy organism can change with it in an adaptive way, a way of helping the organism to not only survive, but to grow, to thrive. Healthy organisms are also coherent – all their parts and systems are working synergistically, in harmony with each other. In the absence of energy, organisms become, literally, lifeless. Energised is a key characteristic of all living organisms – you might also use the word vitality to describe the degree to which an organism is energised. Finally, there is stability. Not the stability of stasis, but the stability of coherence. You are you. You were you when you were 10 years old, and you are you now. Almost everything about you has changed between then and now but you still have a stable sense of self – you still know you are you and not someone else! Stability comes hand in hand with identity.

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, photography, psychology | 1 Comment »

Plants can learn, remember and predict

March 10, 2014 by bobleckridge

There are an increasing number of studies showing how plants have a much greater range of abilities than we realise. We tend to think that because they don’t have neurones and don’t seem to have even the most rudimentary brains, that they won’t be able to perceive, think, remember or imagine……ok, maybe I’m pushing this idea to its limit, but look at this recent study of how Berberis plants deal with infestations by parasites.

berberis

 

The Berberis berries can be infected by a species of fruit fly which injects its larvae into the plant’s fruit. Most of the berries have two seeds in them. To prevent the larvae from feasting on the second seed, the plant can “abort” that seed, resulting in the death of the parasite. A surprising strategy for a plant! But in fact, the plant is even more clever than this makes it seem. Not only has it “learned” how to prevent further parasitic infestation, but it can actually selectively “choose” to abort a seed depending on the chances of the parasite dying off….

If the Barberry aborts a fruit with only one infested seed, then the entire fruit would be lost. Instead it appears to ‘speculate’ that the larva could die naturally, which is a possibility. Slight chances are better than none at all. This anticipative behaviour, whereby anticipated losses and outer conditions are weighed up, very much surprised us. [say the researchers] The message of our study is therefore that plant intelligence is entering the realms of ecological possibility.” The Barberry, it would appear, has evolved a strategy where it’s able to adaptively and selectively abort its own seeds to prevent parasitic infestation. It’s considered the first ecological evidence of such complex behavior in plants, showing that they’re capable of structural memory, the ability to discern between inner and outer conditions, and anticipate future risks.

Posted in from the reading room, life, science | 1 Comment »

The A to Z of Becoming. J for Join

March 9, 2014 by bobleckridge

petanque

 

The Five Ways to Wellbeing…….as described in relation to mental health, are a good place to start if you want to increase your wellbeing.

..5 ways

 

  • Give
  • Keep learning
  • Take notice
  • Be active
  • Connect

This week, in the A to Z of Becoming, we’re at “J for Join”. Joining is one of the ways of connecting. We are not solitary creatures. We couldn’t survive the first few years of life without the care, support and attention of other people, and solitary confinement remains one of the worst forms of punishment which can be inflicted on a prisoner.

So, this week, ask yourself what have joined? Or what would you like to join?

My image at the top of this post was taken when I visited Cassis, in Southern France. Pretty much every town of any size in France has a “Boules” or “Pétanque” court where local people can meet and play together. I don’t know if towns have formal clubs for this activity like the bowling clubs you find in the UK, but even if they don’t, this is still an act of joining. This particular activity also lets you practice noticing and being active (and, maybe even learning!)

Maybe you would like to join with others in a shared activity such as a sport, a game, a pastime, or to celebrate shared beliefs?

Joining is SUCH an important quality of human life.

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People worlds

March 8, 2014 by bobleckridge

february love

Marc Halévy says in his “Petit traité du sens de la vie” that a human being is not “un animal social. Par contre, il est un animal communautaire”. What he means by that is that we are social in a very particular kind of way. We create important and significant bonds between other human beings. That’s how we live….each one of us with our own unique world constructed from our own unique set of relationships with significant others. I’ve read various estimates of the maximum size of such functioning groups – from 50 to 150. Certainly several thousand twitter followers, or facebook friends don’t represent these kinds of real life relationship groups.

He goes on to say that our “communitarian human” is undermined by the “mass society human”. We have societies based on nation states which deal with whole populations as if they are a single mass. In this mass, not only is the individual lost, but so is the individual’s human world of relationships (each of which, remember, is unique in its own right)

I think this takes the understanding of uniqueness, and what it is to be human, to a different level.

Lewis Hyde, in the superb, “The Gift”, deals with this issue from the perspective of the ego…

I find it useful to think of the ego complex as a thing that keeps expanding, not as something to be overcome or done away with. An ego has formed and hardened by the time most of us reach adolescence, but it is small, an ego-of-one. Then, if we fall in love, for example, the constellation of identity expands and the ego-of-one becomes an ego-of-two. The young lover, often to his own amazement, finds himself saying ‘we’ instead of ‘me.’ Each of us identifies with a wider and wider community as we mature, coming eventually to think and act with a group-ego (or, in most of these gift stories, a tribal ego), which speaks with the ‘we’ of kings and wise old people. Of course the larger it becomes, the less it feels like what we usually mean by ego. Not entirely, though: whether an adolescent is thinking of himself or a nation of itself, it still feels like egotism to anyone who is not included. There is still a boundary.

He goes on to argue that the relaxation of that boundary is where we begin to experience the connectedness of everything….begin to lose that sense of duality and separateness from the other.

I think this is helpful. The truth is it isn’t easy to feel that ALL human being are your fellow men and women. But you DO live every day with a number of relationships which are fundamental to the creation of your world. I don’t think this means we should restrict our interest and our compassion to those outside of our personal community but if we approach these relationships from a positive perspective, and understand that every single human being cannot be understood in isolation but only in the context of their own unique web of relationships, then we might find an increase in both love and understanding.

Just a thought…..

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What’s wrong with this picture?

March 7, 2014 by bobleckridge

IMG_1529

 

I’m not sure if you can click on this photo and zoom in to see the text on the offers in the windows of this shop, but if not, let me say a little about it.

I was taking part in a superb community event about wellbeing at Finn’s Place in the Southside of Glasgow and as I walked to the station at the end of the day I saw this “Quality Pound Store” – the offers in the window on the right are virtually ALL sugar, fizzy drinks, or sweets (I think only three are not – can you spot them?)

I can’t make out the other window too well but I think it’s very similar.

What do you think?

What’s wrong with this picture as we try to increase the health and wellbeing of the people of Scotland?

(WHO and sugar, Action on Sugar and to bring a BIG smile to your face, the wonderful Mark Steel!)

 

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Connecting, connecting….the universe’s favourite activity

March 5, 2014 by bobleckridge

This undated handout and annotated image

 

Did you see this?

It’s a photograph of the oldest star in the Universe….or at least, the oldest one, the furthest away one, we’ve managed to see so far. It’s about 13 billion light years away and as the Universe is thought to be just over 13 billion years old, then the light from this star set off towards us just a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang (of course, not everyone agrees there ever was a Big Bang, and we haven’t managed to see just that far back yet BUT let’s just take the theory for real for now)

In the beginning, we think the first element to appear in the universe was Hydrogen, and the strange thing is not only did the energy and subatomic particles which predated Hydrogen not just scatter everywhere, and fill the universe evenly, but Hydrogen particles were brought together in the first stars (like the one in this photo). These stars are giant furnaces, and in their cores they fused Hydrogen particles into Helium ones.

And then there were two. Two kinds of elements.

What happened next?

The bigger the stars, the greater the fusion capacity and the bigger the elements they could manufacture by connecting them up together.

Here’s a diagram illustrating the next steps

IMG_0564

 

Hydrogen fusion produces Helium; Helium fusion produces Carbon, Nitrogen and Oxygen; Carbon fusion produces Oxygen, Neon, Sodium and Magnesium; and so on with each level producing ever heavier elements…..Sulphur, Silicon, Phosphorus and all the other elements in the Periodic Table up to Iron.

Connecting elements together by fusion didn’t go any further than iron, and all the other natural elements in universe were produced by giant cosmological phenomena known as supernovae!

All of these elements scattered around the universe and the universe continued to connect them up, producing this –

IMG_0534

 

….our Earth.

And the connecting didn’t end there. The universe continued connecting the different elements together to create beautiful structures, like sand particles…..

zen sand

 

…which when you look more closely look like this…

IMG_0503

 

…and still the universe kept connecting everything to everything else to produce beautiful spirals of shells…

DSCN0692

 

and…plants and creatures…..

unnamed-1

 

and, eventually…..

unnamed

 

My littlest grandchildren!

Just think! Over 6 billion human beings on this planet, the most complex, most connected phenomena the universe has ever created and every single one of us is unique – no two of us share the same DNA, the same fingerprints, the same irises, and certainly not the same two stories.

There IS a clear direction of travel in this story of the Universe – ever greater complexity, ever greater uniqueness, ever greater connectedness…….

I find that pretty thrilling actually!

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography, science | 1 Comment »

Fitness

March 5, 2014 by bobleckridge

How would you define fitness?

Take a moment to think of some answers for yourself then read this (I suspect rather different) definition….

“resilience during change”

or

“an adaptation to an environment whose complexity co-evolves with the complexity of the system”

I DO like these definitions – because it does seem to me that fitness is indeed about the ability to adapt to change. In a paper entitled “Technological integration and hyper-connectivity: tools for promoting extreme human lifespans”, Marios Kyriazis suggests that it is by becoming fit that an organism increases its chances of survival.

This question of fitness reminds me (for the second time today) of Hans Georg Gadamer’s essays on health, The Enigma of Health. In those essays he discusses the idea of fitness from the perspective of how well something fits – or, in this newer language, how well it develops, adapts and changes with environmental change. (I was thinking of Gadamer when preparing for a talk I gave this evening about how to make health…..it strikes me that he hit the nail on the head when he talked about the mysterious invisible, even disappearing, quality of health…..that it is a natural quality of all living organisms. He says that if we have a wound in our hand then we notice our hand…our attention is drawn to it by the pain, the heat, the redness…but when that wound heals and the pain, heat and redness disappear, so we become unaware again of our hand)

How do you think of fitness? Is it something to do with resilience, and of adaptability?

If Kyriazis is right then the way to increase fitness is to increase the number and quality of connections. And THAT also strikes me as spot on.

Posted in from the consulting room, from the living room, from the reading room, health, life, personal growth | 1 Comment »

Cycles of life

March 3, 2014 by bobleckridge

IMG_1522

 

The splash of gorgeous crocus colour caught my attention in the garden as I looked out through my consulting room window, but when I went outside to photograph some of them I was immediately struck by the fragile skeleton of the leaf in their midst.

What a lovely reminder of the cycles of life

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The A to Z of Becoming. I for Imagine

March 2, 2014 by bobleckridge

Ian McEwan wrote, after 9/11, that one of the crimes of the terrorists was a failure of imagination

If the hijackers had been able to imagine themselves into the thoughts and feelings of the passengers, they would have been unable to proceed. It is hard to be cruel once you permit yourself to enter the mind of your victim. Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.

This touched me deeply when I read it. I think this is the key way I use imagination on a daily basis. I don’t know any other way to understand what patients tell me other than by trying to imagine what it is they are experiencing. I don’t think all of empathy or compassion can be explained as the use of the imagination (mirror neurones, being present, being non-judgemental are all other elements) BUT I do think it’s an essential element. Imagination is my everyday working tool.

We imagine in order to create our world of course. If we imagine that the universe is a cold, hostile place, where it’s every man for himself and dog eat dog, then we will have a particular experience of life….we will create for ourselves a particular kind of world. If we imagine that in the universe we are all connected, and that there is a purpose to existence, then we’ll create quite a different kind of world for ourselves.

IMG_0534

To imagine is to create.

Watch any little children playing. My youngest grand-daughter looks at a cardboard box and sees a palace, or a jungle, or……….

IMG_1519

 

….an ambulance!

When was the last time you sat down with some blank paper, some crayons, paints, glue and coloured papers, and just let your imagination flow?

What might you imagine this week?

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography | 2 Comments »

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