Category: Health

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.