Accessing Universal Intelligence.
Human Ingenuity and Creativity. Our Cultural Heritage.
Favourite things. Music and Movies. Nature. Items that interest me on any topic.
Children’s relationships with soft toys is neither superficial nor
unimportant to psychological development. If you like our films, take a
look at our shop (we ship worldwide): https://goo.gl/bbNOLH
FURTHER READING Sometimes
you can catch important things about human nature in apparent
incidentals. It’s well observed that between the ages of around one and
twelve, many children manifest a deep attachment to a stuffed soft
object, normally shaped into a bear, a rabbit or – less often – a
penguin. The depth of the relationship can be extraordinary. The child
sleeps with it, talks to it, cries in front of it and tells it things it
would never tell anyone else. What’s truly remarkable is that the
animal looks after its owner, addressing him in a tone of unusual
maturity and kindness. It might, in a crisis, urge the child not to
worry and to look forward to better times in the future. But naturally,
the animal’s character is entirely made up. The animal is simply
something invented, or brought to life by one part of the child, in
order to look after the other. More at: http://www.thebookoflife.org/stuffed-...
MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE
Our website has classes, articles and products to help you think and grow: https://goo.gl/P0DPzb
Do
you speak a different language to English? Did you know you can submit
Subtitles on all of our videos on YouTube? For instructions how to do
this click here: https://goo.gl/ZPGmkH
A deep-breathing trick can
make insomniacs drop off to sleep in less than one minute,
according to a health expert. The method involves holding the breath in stages then
exhaling with a loud whooshing noise. This “4-7-8” method has been pioneered by
US sleep expert Dr Andrew Weil, who claims the technique works by calming the
mind and relaxing the body.
Breath control
More than 1.5 million
Australians suffer from poor sleep, with stress, mobile devices and taking work home often
blamed for the lack of quality rest. Consistently poor sleep puts you at risk of
medical conditions such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes,
and it can also shorten your life expectancy. But Weil, the founder of the
Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, says a
simple alteration to your normal breathing could be the answer. “This comes from yoga
breathing techniques where you keep the tip of the tongue
behind the upper front teeth,” he says. “You breathe in through your nose
quietly and blow air out forcefully through your mouth, making a whoosh sound. It takes about 30 seconds, so
there’s no excuse for not doing it, and it produces a pleasant altered state of
consciousness. You may not get that the first time you do it but it’s one of the
benefits of practising.” The trick is to breathe in
quietly through the nose for four seconds, then hold for seven seconds and
exhale completely for a count of eight. The steps are then repeated between two
and four times. Weil says it’s effective
because it allows the lungs to become fully charged with air, allowing more
oxygen into the body, which promotes a state of calm. “You have to do this two times a
day religiously. It will become a wonderful way to help you fall asleep,” he
says. “You can do it more often throughout the day if you wish. “It’s utterly simple, takes
almost no time, requires no equipment and can be done anywhere. After about four
to six weeks, you’ll see wonderful changes in your body.”
The benefits
Weil says this technique
can be used to deal with cravings and control anger. He also claims it can combat the “fight or flight”
response in the body, lowering stress levels. The method is based on an
ancient Indian practice called pranayama, which roughly translates to
“regulation of breath”, and is used widely in yoga and Pilates. Research has shown that breathing
exercises such as pranayama can have instant effects by changing blood pressure.
But more importantly, they can be used as a method to train the body’s reaction
to stressful situations and dampen the production of harmful stress hormones.
Rapid breathing makes the body think it’s stressed, but deep breaths stimulate
the opposing parasympathetic reaction, which calms you down. In 1975, Harvard University
researcher Herbert Benson discovered that short periods of deep-breathing
meditation triggered a “relaxation response”. Following decades of
research, he claimed in 2010 that it could lead to genetic changes that counter
the effects of stress. “It does away with the whole mind-body separation,”
Benson says in his book, The Relaxation Response. “You can use the mind to
change the body, and the genes we’re changing [are] the very genes acting in an
opposite fashion when people are under stress.” Whether or not such techniques
help you fall asleep in 60 seconds, there’s no doubt being mindful of your
breath helps you relax.
Sleep needs throughout life
Newborns
0-3 months
Recommended: 14-17 hours
Not recommended: Less than 11;
more than 19
Infants
4-11 months
Recommended: 12-15 hours
Not recommended: Less than 10;
more than 18
Toddlers
1-2 years
Recommended: 11-14 hours
Not recommended:Less than 9;
more than 16
Preschoolers
3-5 years
Recommended: 10-13 hours
Not recommended: Less than 8;
more than 14
School-age
kids
6-13 years
Recommended: 9-11 hours
Not recommended: Less than 7;
more than 12
Teenagers
14-17 years
Recommended: 8-10 hours
Not recommended: Less than 7;
more than 11
Young
adults
18-25 years
Recommended: 7-9 hours
Not recommended: Less than 6;
more than 11
Adults
26-64 years
Recommended: 7-9 hours
Not recommended: Less than 6;
more than 10
Older
adults
65+ years
Recommended: 7-8 hours
Not recommended: Less than 5;
more than 9
What happens to a sleep-deprived
body?
A
long-term lack of sleep has been linked to a greater risk of obesity, heart disease,
stroke and diabetes. So what’s behind this
association? The University of Chicago in the US has conducted various studies
into human sleep deprivation and observed that even after a few days of reduced
sleep, the following physical changes can occur:
Higher blood pressure (a factor
in stroke and heart disease)
Higher levels of the stress
hormone cortisol (which impacts heart health and body weight)
Lower levels of antibodies
(which fight viruses and infection)
An unconscious crack of the knuckles, an automatic grab for the salt shaker, a seemingly
innocuous eye roll in front of the boss. Bad habits are way too easy to come by
and, despite whatever quick-remedy self-help cure-all is blowing up the Internet
this week, often way too hard to break.
Whether it's that innocent flip of the hair or
something much more insidious, behaviors learned over time — and reinforced time
and time again — mostly can't be changed in a couple weeks. That was the major
takeaway of a study done in 2009, the results of which appeared in the European Journal of Social
Psychology.
Certainly, bad habits can be changed. That's the
good news. People stop smoking, give up chocolate, get off the couch to start
exercising and stop torturing their poor knuckles all the time. Good habits can
be formed to replace bad ones, too. In fact, switching out nasty for nice is
something scientists and psychologists have been preaching for
years.
But changing a lifetime of cola-guzzling, for
just an example, in a couple weeks? In 21 days?
Well, it's possible. Maybe. But you'd better
plan for it to take a lot longer than that.
"I think that's one of the biggest problems,
when people think they can do anything in three weeks," Amy Morin, a
psychotherapist, clinical social worker and author of "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't
Do," told MNN. "I think that can set us up
for failure."
Number 13 on Morin's list — which first appeared
as a blog post on lifehack.org, then went practically viral in other places,
with more than 10 million total views — is especially pertinent when it comes to
breaking bad habits. Mentally strong people, Morin insists at the bottom of her list, don't expect immediate
results.
"When you think about it, even from a logical
level, it makes no sense," Morin said of the 21 days to a miracle movement. "We
really like our habits. [Breaking them] requires a lot of hard work. I think we
underestimate how hard it's going to be. And we overestimate our abilities [to
break the habits]."
The paper in the European
Journal of Social Psychology studied the length of time it took participants in
a study to replace bad habits with good ones. The fastest was an astonishing 18
days. But the average time to change, among the participants who self-reported
their results, was not three weeks but closer to three months (66 days). The
high end of the spectrum, for replacing bad with good, was a whopping 254
days.
So someone expecting to
change a life habit in 21 days — no matter how motivated that someone might be,
or who that someone might be — is probably expecting a little too much. Still,
huge numbers of books (just check out this
Amazon list) all but promise that it
can be done in 21 days or so by following a few easy steps. And, of course, by
shelling out a few bucks for the book. Plus shipping and
handling.
"The more you do it,"
Patricia A. Farrell, PhD, a clinical psychologist in Englewood, New Jersey, and
author of "How
to Be your Own Therapist," told WebMD,
"the more difficult it is to get rid if it."
It's hard to pinpoint where the
idea that it takes just 21 days to kick a bad habit began. Many cite a 1960 work
from a plastic surgeon, Dr. Maxwell Maltz, who is regarded as a pioneer in the
self-help book industry. His book, "Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More
Living Out of Life," centers on improving a person's self-image. Some of his
advice for breaking bad habits: "To change a habit, make a conscious decision,"
he said, "then act out the new behavior."
Ahhh, if only it were that
simple.
A lot of psychological
and biological reasons exist to explain why it's so difficult to lose a bad
habit. One important one: Some of our most enjoyable or satisfying actions (say,
reaching for the salt or pulling off that oh-so-sweet crack of the knuckles)
trigger the production of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is present when we do
it over and over again, creating the habit, Dr. Russell Poldrack, a
neurobiologist at the University of Texas at Austin, says in this National
Institute of Health feature. And
dopamine creates a craving to repeat the behavior. Again and again and
again.
So even when the behavior
itself does not provide
the satisfaction we crave — that salt
just isn't making those fries taste any better, and that knuckle-crack was just
okay — the body is telling you to keep going for it anyway.
It's important to keep in mind,
as experts everywhere will tell you, that kicking a habit, even the nastiest of
habits, is doable. Whole books — heck, whole libraries — are available to
explain the steps that must be taken to break a bad habit and keep it broken.
First off: acknowledging that there is a bad habit. Writing down your goals.
And "put your gym shoes where the remote is," Morin suggests for a start to
kicking that TV addiction and getting in shape.
The better news is that
trashing those bad habits and replacing them with good ones can be absolutely
transformational. Even if it might take a little more than three weeks to do
it. By John Donovan
