Category: Health

Have you played today?

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“Health begins where we live, learn, work and play.”

That statement came out of a recent Robert Wood Johnson Foundation commission on building a healthier America. It means that all of the social environments in which we spend time help determine our overall health outcomes.

Play (def.): to occupy oneself in amusement, sport, or other recreation.

But how much do adults play? Is having fun the lowest priority item on your to-do list when obligations at work and at home have to be met? The truth is that, like exercise, we will never have enough extra time for play until we make the time for it and schedule it in our day.

There’s a good case to be made for playing – doing something that’s fun just for the sake of having fun, in a noncompetitive and unpressured way. It helps us regain some of the unqualified joy and spontaneity we had as children, and, possibly, to experience what Buddhists refer to as “beginner’s mind”. Beginner’s mind means looking at something without the lens of prior knowledge, experience, or, especially, judgment. It means simply experiencing something as it is, in the moment, instead of how we want or expect it to be.

Beginner’s mind can more easily be accessed if we regularly try new “play” activities. Being a little bit adventurous, perhaps even taking a risk (whether it is physical, social or psychological) could create an opportunity for a beginner’s mind experience.  A few years ago, I decided that birthdays are a good time of year to try something new. That’s a bit challenging with a birthday at Thanksgiving time, but it was easier on my sister’s summertime birthday, when we tried a 7-mile hike on the Appalachian Trail. We challenged ourselves, took a wrong turn or two, laughed a lot and thought about nothing else for those few hours.

While it’s pretty widely recognized that play is important for children’s development, we sometimes forget that adults have a need for play too. Any type of play, whether it is something we’ve always enjoyed or something new, can give us perspective on other areas of our lives. It can foster creative thinking and problem-solving. Play can stimulate and refresh both brain and body.  Playing with other people helps us make and nurture social connections. Play teaches us to be flexible and cooperative, and to work as a team.

In some workplaces, play is integrated into the workday. Google is probably the most famous for supplying games such as Foosball, ping pong and volleyball on site. At Zappos, one of the company’s core values is to “create fun and a little weirdness”. Other companies provide climbing walls, swimming pools and monthly parties. Some would say that these perks are designed to keep people working longer hours. That may be true, but at least they have the opportunity to take a play break.

What are your ideas for fun at work or at home? Have you played today?

Love

jilrob3 Comments

Mother’s Day is upon us, and once again millions of flowery cards and words of love and gratitude will be exchanged on Sunday. Some of the sentiment will be genuine and some will feel perfunctory. Either way, it seems like a good time to stop and reflect on what love really does for us. How does giving and receiving love keep us healthy?

Hugging and hand-holding are known to trigger release of the hormone oxytocin, lowering stress hormones in the blood, thereby reducing blood pressure. Feelings of love also trigger the release of dopamine in the brain, leading to feelings of pleasure and motivation.

Practicing gratitude has been associated with sleeping better, exercising more, having fewer health problems, and experiencing greater general well-being. How do you practice gratitude? Some people keep journals for this purpose, and write in them regularly.

Married people (who we will assume love each other) tend to live longer, visit the doctor less often and drink less than single people. Happily married people have lower blood pressure than those who are not, and tend to recover from injuries faster.

So it’s always a good day to nurture your relationships, and not just with Mom. Surprising as it may seem, loving yourself first goes a long way to helping you love others. If you treat yourself like your own best friend, limiting the negative self-talk going on in your head, your perspective on life will be brighter and your interactions with others will improve.

During a loving kindness meditation yesterday, I reflected on the people in my life that I love. Some are easier to love, and be loved by, than others. But it’s important to let all of them know that they are loved. One of the best ways to do that is to be generous with my time and attention to them, to really see and listen to them, even in the difficult moments.

“The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.” (Thich Nhat Hanh)

All You Need is Love

The Space Between

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The other day my yoga teacher was talking about pausing between breaths, and how that relates to taking moments of stillness between life’s activities. I thought about how we tend to focus on what we do, hear, say and see rather than on what we don’t. A couple of years ago, I went to a concert where the musician commented that the space between the notes is still part of the music. When I teach communication skills, I remind students that silences are still part of a conversation. White space in an advertisement is part of the message. And not doing can often help you get where you want to be.

Too often, we have the urge to fill those spaces between. We barely wait for someone else to finish talking before we begin. We fill all the space on the page with words and pictures. We fill our houses with stuff. We fill our days with activity after activity. We are uncomfortable with silence, we mistake simplicity for emptiness, and we confuse activity with accomplishment.

In his book, Wisdom 2.0, Soren Gordhamer suggests that our stress and irritation whenever we have to stop and wait for something (traffic, checkout lines, slow computers) might come from our disconnection with our inner life.  We just feel uncomfortable being alone with our thoughts and feelings, even for a few minutes.  To restore that connection, Gordhamer recommends viewing these forced pauses as an invitation to relax, to breathe, and to take a break. Yes, it’s frustrating to wait when you might already be late, but since you cannot change it, accept it as a gift. Use the time to breathe deeply and notice what’s going on around you, and “be present as you wait.”

I tried this yesterday while waiting in line to pick up a prescription. Everyone in front of me was taking a long time. But I didn’t get impatient; I just waited, and breathed. I even let the person behind me go ahead of me because he seemed to be in distress. I felt pretty good when I left the store – at exactly the same time, but in a much better frame of mind, as I would have left if I had been fuming the whole time.