• अमेरिका खबर इडिटरियल
• Breaking News
• September 15, 2021
• 368 views
• 1 minute Read

राष्ट्रिय जनगणना : साढे आठ हजार सुपरिवेक्षक खटिए

काठमाडौं । १२औँ राष्ट्रिय जनगणनाको पहिलो चरणअन्तर्गत बुधबारबाट घर तथा घरपरिवार सूचीकरण सुरु हुँदैछ ।  कोरोना महामारीका कारण साढे तीन महिना धकेलिएको जनगणनाको प्रक्रिया सुरु भएको हो । राष्ट्रिय तथ्यांक विभागले…

• अमेरिका खबर इडिटरियल
• Breaking News
• September 11, 2021
• 302 views
• 1 minute Read

अमेरिकाको बाढीमा तीन नेपालीको मृत्यु भएको पुष्टि

अमेरिकाको बाढीमा तीन नेपालीको मृत्यु भएको पुष्टि

• 
• Breaking News
• January 1, 1970
• 103 views
• 3 minutes Read

For Better Well-Being, Just Breathe

For Better Well-Being, Just Breathe

I was a graduate student in Manhattan having breakfast on my rooftop on Sept. 11, 2001, when I witnessed planes demolish the Twin Towers. For months afterward, I shook with anxiety every morning. Unwilling to medicate, I tried everything else. Mindfulness meditation induced panic attacks. Hot yoga built muscle but did nothing for my anxiety. I went to talks by Buddhist monks and meditation teachers hoping to attain inner peace, to no avail. Finally, I attended a SKY Breath Meditation class, which involves a 20-minute breathing regimen in different postures and rhythms. Though I went in skeptical, I came out calm. Two decades later, I haven’t missed a day of my breathing practice, not even when I gave birth.

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I’ve also devoted part of my research career to studying the benefits of breathing for mental health and well-being. Seven years after 9/11, I was working with veterans returning from war with post­traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Traditional treatments had failed many of them, so my colleagues and I ran a randomized controlled trial to test the effects of SKY breathing (which the nonprofit Art of Living Foundation teaches to the general public and Project Welcome Home Troops offers to veterans and military). Compared with the control group, veterans practicing SKY every day for one week saw their anxiety drop to levels typical of the general population. Even though most did not continue to practice, they maintained the benefits a year later. In fact, many veterans in our study no longer qualified as having PTSD. A larger study at the Palo Alto, Calif., veterans hospital found that SKY had similar benefits to cognitive processing therapy, the current gold-­standard PTSD treatment. Veterans who practiced SKY also showed more physiological improvements than those who just had therapy. For people who don’t want to revisit or discuss painful memories, or devote the time and costs necessary for therapy, breathing practices are a nice alternative.

Emotions influence your breathing patterns, and changing your breathing can change your emotions. For example, anxiety and anger correspond to an irregular, short, fast breath. Adopting the slower and more regular breathing pattern that corresponds to a calm feeling signals relaxation by activating the vagus nerve, slowing heart rate, easing blood pressure, and settling you down. A simple exercise you can try is to close your eyes and breathe out for twice as long as you breathe in. Do this for five minutes in the morning, before a stressful meeting, or as you transition from work to home.

Breathing holds up compared with other reputable well-being practices. In a 2020 randomized controlled trial, my Yale colleagues and I assigned stressed undergraduates to either a control group, a group that practiced SKY breathing, one that did mindfulness meditation, or one that learned skills to improve emotional intelligence. SKY showed more statistically significant benefits for mental health and well-being than the other interventions. Perhaps that’s because breathing is not mainly a self-awareness practice—it actively relaxes your physiological state.

Seppälä is a faculty member at the Yale School of Management and author of The Happiness Track

Emotions influence your breathing patterns, and changing your breathing can change your emotions.

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Uncategorized, healthscienceclimate, Mental Health, Wellbeing

Health – TIME

Emotions influence your breathing patterns, and changing your breathing can change your emotions.

• 
• Breaking News
• January 1, 1970
• 84 views
• 4 minutes Read

Why Happiness Isn’t a Project of Pollyanna-ism

Why Happiness Isn’t a Project of Pollyanna-ism

Looking at the world around us, happiness may seem an unattainable goal. As we move into the fourth year of a pandemic that has killed millions and continues to threaten health and well-being worldwide, compounded by devastating consequences of climate change, spikes in hate crimes, and continued fallout from systemic oppression and inequality, there seems little reason to be happy. Indeed, results from the 2022 annual Stress in America survey indicate one-third of the respondents report that their stress in the face of these challenges is “overwhelming.”

Simply ignoring or denying stress, or suppressing your negative emotions and pretending everything is just fine, will not lead to enduring happiness. In most cases, negative emotions are, surprisingly, useful—they provide important signals about our environment and can guide us to an appropriate response. For example, fear signals that you might be in a potentially dangerous situation and you should try to get away; anger may motivate you to confront an injustice. Similarly, overly focusing on pursuing positive emotions like happiness can paradoxically result in less happiness. Really, too much of any emotion in the wrong context will not serve you well. Noticing, recognizing, and labeling your emotions—both the negative and the positive—is associated with better physical health and emotional well-being.

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The key to enduring happiness is not to rid your life of negative emotions; instead, the goal is to also experience positive emotions even in the midst of difficulties. This balance can be particularly challenging when times are dark. In my research, I work with people who are experiencing significant life stress, such as diagnosis with a serious disease or caregiving for a loved one with dementia, and teach them skills to increase the positive emotions of the experience alongside the negative. These skills include noticing and savoring positive events, mindful awareness, nonjudgment, gratitude, and acts of kindness, among others. Our research has demonstrated practicing these skills leads to more happiness, even when life seems especially difficult.

One of our study participants who is caring for a family member with dementia described to me how she uses positive emotional skills she learned in our program to cope with the stress of caregiving: “There are days I just want to go and jump in my car and drive and never come back. So I think, ‘OK, I’m grateful for this. I have this, I can do this. I’m resourceful.’” In the past, she says, “I would just be so angry sometimes at my situation. Now I’m able to go, ‘OK, I can be angry for two minutes and then, Done! Not all day long.’”

Practicing these skills works for me too. During the pandemic, I have been noticing and savoring the small things more—for example, this morning, before I sat down to write, I took the time to appreciate that even though it is cold here in Chicago, the sun is out, a welcome change from the past week or so of clouds. The sun shining is not going to change any of the really big problems in the world right now, but by taking a moment to notice, I get an additional hit of positive emotion and feel better equipped to cope with whatever challenges come up in my day.

In 1867, abolitionist, feminist, and human-rights crusader Sojourner Truth captured this philosophy well: “Life is a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life’s light to be determined by the darkness around me.” Rather than a laser focus on achieving happiness in the face of life’s big and small challenges, follow Sojourner Truth’s advice and find the small things you can do to bring more moments of happiness into each day, while still acknowledging that life can be a hard battle. Donate to an organization that feeds the hungry. Let a co-worker know that you are grateful for their help on a big project. Take a few moments to savor your delicious morning coffee or even just look at pictures of puppies and kittens on the internet. Intentionally seek out the moments of laughter and song that will allow your life’s light to shine, even when the world seems darkest. That’s the definition of happiness.

Moskowitz is a professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University and director of research at the Northwestern Osher Center for Integrative Health

Simply suppressing your negative emotions and pretending everything is just fine does not lead to enduring happiness.

Read More

Uncategorized, healthscienceclimate, Mental Health, Wellbeing

Health – TIME

Simply suppressing your negative emotions and pretending everything is just fine does not lead to enduring happiness.