Thinking Citizen Blog — Three Tips for Mindful Living (Tara Parker-Pope, NYT)
Thinking Citizen Blog — Thursday is Health, Health Care, Health Insurance and Global Health Policy Day
Today’s Topic: Three Tips for Mindful Living (Tara Parker-Pope, NYT)
By just naming negative feelings you can help conquer them. Have you ever tried this? Have you ever taken a “gratitude photo”? Have you ever tried an “exercise snack”? These are three ideas from a series of tips for mindful living from award-winning New York Times wellness reporter Tara Parker-Pope. Today, a few notes on each. Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
NAMING YOUR FEARS IMPROVES HEALTH
1. Most people instinctively go into denial mode when they experience negative emotions. But this is not healthy. Better to face the monster. Start by naming it. Scientists call this “affect labeling.”
2. Brain scans have shown that when you label your emotion, the alarm bells in your amygdala are shut off as the parts of your prefrontal cortex charged with managing emotions are activated.
3. The more specific and negative the language the better. To help come up with the right words for you for a specific situation, click on the fourth link which provides a negative feelings vocabulary list. Parker-Pope suggests taping it onto your refrigerator.
THE GRATITUDE PHOTOGRAPH — a flower, a friend, a place
1. Gratitude photography is a branch of “savoring” technology. That is, tools that help you slow down and “smell the roses.”
2. Too often we rush through life, ignoring the little things that bring us the most joy.
3. Especially useful for people who have a hard time keeping a “gratitude journal.” Writing is not everybody’s thing.
NB: It’s about cultivating the sense of awe.
THE “EXERCISE SNACK” — YUM!
1. “An exercise “snack” is a short burst of movement you can do anywhere, anytime. You don’t even need to change your clothes.” Even 20 seconds, three times a day, three days a week, could change your life. Really.
2. Examples: body squats, jumping jacks, push ups.
3. Get out of the mental straight jacket that you have to go to the gym to get into better shape.
NB: Got 3 minutes? 6? 7? How about 4 seconds? Whatever the number, Parker-Pope has multiple options for you to choose from.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/well/pandemic-wellness-mental-health.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/well/gratitude-photo.html
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/well-fresh-start-challenge#pandemic-wellness-exercise
https://www.hoffmaninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/feelingssensations.pdf
For the last three years of posts organized by theme:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
Please share the most interesting thing you learned in the last week related to health, health care or health care policy — the ethics, economics, politics, history…. Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to health are or health care policy that the rest of us may have missed. Or just some random health-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make some one’s day. Or to cement in your mind something really important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than you otherwise would about something that matters.
