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30 Jun 2023
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The decline of American playtime — and how to resurrect it

 

About 30 years ago, something happened to the way kids play.

While American children had once commonly enjoyed the freedom to run around outside with minimal adult interference, they began to spend more time indoors where their parents could watch them. When they did go outside, they were more often accompanied by a grown-up; unstructured roughhousing and role-playing were replaced by supervised play dates or carefully shepherded trips to the park. Kids began to spend more time in organized activities, like dance or sports, and less time in the kind of disorganized milling-about familiar to generations past.

The reasons for this shift were many: fears of kidnapping, stoked by a series of highly publicized cases; an increase in the length of the school year; parental anxieties about children’s futures in a time of growing income inequality and economic insecurity. The result was a 25 percent drop in children’s unstructured playtime between 1981 and 1997, setting in motion a pattern of less freedom and more adult surveillance that historians and child psychologists believe continues to this day. “All kinds of independent activities that used to be part of normal childhood have gradually been diminishing,” said Peter Gray, a psychology professor at Boston College who studies play.

The decline in kids’ unstructured time is bad for fun as structured activities like classes and sports in which adults are evaluating and judging kids’ performance can be more like work than play, Gray said. It’s bad for learning, because children need playtime to develop motor and social skills. And it could be hurting kids’ health — in a commentary earlier this year in the Journal of Pediatrics, Gray and his co-authors argue that the decline in play and independence could be one reason children and teens have reported skyrocketing levels of anxiety, depression, and sadness in recent years.

In a time when parents can be arrested for letting children play unsupervised, and threats to children, both real and perceived, seem only to multiply, giving a kid the freedom to roam can seem impossible. Still, experts say there are ways families can grant children more autonomy, as well as structural changes that can make schools, communities, and the country as a whole more friendly to children’s freedom. After all, “if you take away play from children, they’re going to be depressed,” Gray said. “What is life for anybody without play?”

How kids lost the freedom to play

A lot of experts trace the decline of play back to a spate of high-profile kidnappings. It started with Etan Patz, a 6-year-old New York City boy who disappeared in 1979 on the way to the bus stop, argues Paul Renfro, a history professor at Florida State University and the author of Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State. His case was soon followed by the disappearances of Adam Walsh, Kevin Collins, and two Iowa paperboys — Johnny Gosch and Eugene Martin — who vanished during their routes (then, as now, the victims whose stories made the biggest headlines were white).

The crimes weren’t connected, nor were they indicative of a wider increase in child abductions. But they received enormous media attention, with the boys’ stories, photographs, and interviews with their grieving parents featured on newscasts across the country. Some of the boys’ images also appeared on the backs of milk cartons as part of a campaign launched by the nonprofit National Child Safety Council in 1984. The campaign only lasted a few years, but it had an outsize cultural impact, inspiring the bestselling young adult novel The Face on the Milk Carton and creating a climate in which families were “surrounded by reminders of missing children,” Renfro said.

The fear was such that 72 percent of parents feared their children getting abducted, according to one 1991 study — in another study, conducted in 1987, 44 percent of children said it was likely or highly likely that they would be kidnapped at some point. Newscasters claimed that 50,000 children were abducted every year.

The real figure was closer to 100, Renfro said, and children have always been more likely to be kidnapped by family members or other adults they know than by strangers. Still, “stranger danger” gripped the American unconscious and didn’t let go.

At the same time, commentators across the political spectrum were pushing the idea that “the American family” — really the white nuclear family with two parents and 2.5 children, living in the suburbs — was at risk, Renfro said. In addition to kidnappers, supposed dangers included women entering the workforce, a decline in the prosperity that white families had enjoyed in the wake of World War II, and a burgeoning gay rights movement. “The narrative of the family under threat and, by extension, the child under threat really takes hold and is really appealing to people in this particular moment,” Renfro said. (That narrative continues to this day, and fears of stranger danger can be seen in QAnon conspiracy theories about child trafficking, Renfro said, and in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric about “grooming.”)

These anxieties collided with another worry: that American schoolchildren were falling behind the rest of the world academically. In the second half of the 20th century, the length of the school year increased by five weeks, Gray said. Kids began getting homework as early as kindergarten, and recess and lunch got shorter. To compensate for the lack of exercise in school, parents began putting their children in more sports and other organized extracurricular activities. Meanwhile, the growing wealth gap increased middle-class parents’ fear for their children’s economic futures, as well as the pressure to go to college in order to find a good job. “Children began to be pressured, even early on, to build the kind of resume that would ultimately get them into a fancy college,” Gray said.

The result of all of this was a shift in how Americans thought and talked about childhood. Prior to the 1980s, parenting advice had often emphasized the importance of independence, Gray said — allowing children to walk to school on their own, play unsupervised, and hold part-time jobs when they were old enough. Starting in that decade, however, conventional wisdom began to shift toward the idea that children should be watched all the time.

The culture of parenting began to change, too, with the “latchkey kid” generation of the ’70s and early ’80s giving way to norms of intensive parenting and families spending more time together. Indeed, working moms in the 2010s spent as much time with their children as stay-at-home mothers in the 1970s. And while the rate of stranger kidnappings has not changed in recent decades, other risks, including school shootings and traffic fatalities, have grown.

The last 20 years or so have also seen a rise in parents’ access to “technology that allows us to know or to think we’re supposed to know exactly what our kids are doing,” said Lynn Lyons, a therapist who specializes in anxiety disorders. That includes everything from cellphones (which a majority of kids now have by age 12) to AirTags (which some parents use to track children) to parent portals at schools and day cares (which can send notifications about something as small as a baby’s dirty diaper).

The effect of smartphones themselves on children’s play is complex. While many blame screen time for a decline in active play, some research suggests that smartphones can enrich kids’ outdoor experiences by, for example, allowing them to listen to music or stay in touch with friends. For parents, however, the constant stream of information can be the opposite of reassuring, and lead them to further monitor and restrict their kids’ movements. “Access to more information about everything that’s going on doesn’t make you feel better,” Lyons said. “It actually makes you more anxious.”

Meanwhile, Black parents in particular have also had to contend with the risk of police brutality and other racist violence. In interviews with researchers, Black moms of sons have expressed “a baseline of concern every time their child walked out the door,” said J. Richelle Joe, a professor of counselor education at the University of Central Florida. “The concern was, will people who engage with my son see him as a threat, and will he potentially be harmed or even killed just for existing?”

As a Black mom living in majority-white Orange County, California, Trina Greene Brown says she didn’t let her son play outside on his own. “Some people will call that helicopter parenting,” said Brown, the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Parenting for Liberation. “I would say it’s not helicopter parenting; it’s because Black people have often lived in helicopter environments where our children and ourselves and our bodies have been under heavy surveillance.”

Kids of color and low-income kids also face disproportionate structural barriers to spending time outside, from a lack of green space to levels of neighborhood crime. All these factors and more contribute to an environment in which, whether it’s for their sheer physical safety or out of concern for their economic future, kids are losing out on opportunities for free and independent play.

Playing is fun. It’s also necessary.

Such play, though, has a host of benefits, experts say. Free play helps develop kids’ executive functioning abilities, a set of skills that includes planning and self-control, Lyons said. It’s also important for building friendships. One study, conducted in Switzerland in the 1990s, compared children who played unsupervised in their neighborhoods to children who spent more time playing in parks with their parents looking on. The free-playing kids had more than twice as many friends as the park visitors, and had better social and motor skills — they also spent more time outside overall.

Play can also be a way for kids to develop a sense of autonomy, which in turn helps them feel good about themselves. Regardless of age, “people are happier and mentally healthier when they feel that they are in charge of their own lives,” Gray said. “When people feel that they’re not in charge, that other people are making their decisions for them, they don’t feel so good.”

Indeed, the presence of grown-ups seems to diminish the psychological benefits of kids’ activities, experts say. “The more that play for kids is organized and directed by adults, the less opportunities that kids have to develop some really important skills that we know are preventive for anxiety — and, because anxiety is so closely linked to depression, to depression as well,” Lyons said.

These and other mental health problems have been on the rise among kids and teens for decades — one in 11 American children today has an anxiety disorder, and a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year found that almost three in five teenage girls experienced persistent sadness in 2021, the highest level in 10 years. Experts and armchair commentators alike have floated explanations for this phenomenon from the advent of social media to climate change and economic insecurity, but Gray and others believe the drop in play — and in other measures of freedom like walking to school and holding part-time jobs — could be to blame. “What children need is freedom to be children,” Gray said, “to play and explore and interact with other kids.”

Adults can give kids back their playtime, but it will take work

Reintroducing unstructured play into children’s lives, however, is easier said than done. Just sending kids out to play until the streetlights come on is no longer a social norm. Families can face anything from social opprobrium to prosecution for letting kids play unsupervised, and the consequences are especially severe for parents of color and low-income parents, who are already subject to a disproportionate degree of surveillance around their childrearing choices.

Moreover, the events of the last few years, from the pandemic to wildfires to formula shortages and more, have contributed to a climate of intense anxiety among today’s parents — many of whom grew up in the milk-carton era and were anxious children and teenagers themselves. “Anxiety seeks certainty,” Lyons said. “The more that we restrict, the more that we don’t let our kids move into the world, the better we feel in terms of our own anxiety.”

However, there are ways parents can give their kids more freedom, even in a society that doesn’t make it easy. It starts with adults recognizing and coping with their anxieties, as much as they can. “I encourage parents to do their own work, engage in their own counseling to unpack whatever concerns that they might have, whatever fears that they’re holding on to,” Joe said. In addition to working with a therapist, if possible, it’s helpful to reach out to other parents for support and commiseration. “Then parents themselves feel less isolated with their concerns,” Joe said.

Parents can also take steps to avoid passing their anxieties to their children. They can limit what Lyons calls “safety chatter”: “the constant stream of be careful, get down, watch out” that can serve as the soundtrack to a playground trip or scooter ride. They can also work on letting kids take reasonable risks, whether that’s climbing a tree or just stepping into a situation that might be a bit uncomfortable at first. “We want kids to be pushed a little bit,” Lyons said. “We want to offer them things that feel challenging.”

Grown-ups can also resist the pull of tracking apps and other technologies that let parents keep tabs on kids at all times. “I work with parents that have baby monitors in their kids’ bedrooms, and their kids are 12 years old,” Lyons said. “We’ve got this idea right now that the closer we keep our kids, the more information we have, the more we direct, the more that we control, the better off our kids will be. And the research is showing the opposite.”

Parents can also band together to make their neighborhoods more hospitable for children’s play. One strategy would be for neighboring parents to agree to send their kids outdoors at certain times of the week, with one adult on hand just for safety, Gray said.

But it can’t be just on individual parents to reverse a trend that took a whole society to create — especially since not all families have access to outdoor space, trees to climb, or affordable therapy options. Schools, too, can encourage freedom and exploration for kids by bringing back recess in places where it’s been curtailed, Gray said. Districts in Connecticut, New York, and elsewhere have also adopted what they call play clubs, an hour before or after school in which kids of all ages play together with minimal interference from teachers and “no rules except don’t hurt anybody,” Gray said. “Schools can play a big role, if schools can see themselves as places for play.”

Colorado, Nevada, and other states have also passed reasonable independence laws, spearheaded by Let Grow, a nonprofit co-founded by Gray. The laws protect parents from being prosecuted for letting their children do unsupervised activities like walking to school or playing outside.

If giving kids and parents more freedom is one side of the solution, though, another side is making society as a whole safer for kids to roam free. While stranger kidnappings may not be a common danger for kids, others, like shootings, car crashes, and family violence, all deserve attention, Renfro said. “If we’re serious about protecting kids, these are all matters that need to be discussed rather than shrugged away or ignored in favor of more sensational or salacious issues.”

Dismantling systemic racism in law enforcement, schools, and everywhere it exists is also an inextricable part of the conversation around children’s autonomy, Joe said. As long as Black parents have to worry about their children being harmed while playing in a park or walking home, “then Black families are still going to have the challenge of trying to encourage their children to be autonomous and independent within a context that’s not always so safe for them.”

White Americans also need to address the racist biases within themselves and their families that lead to Black children being perceived as less innocent or more adult than their age, and their play or simple existence being perceived as threatening. “As a Black parent who’s raising a child in a predominantly white community, I really need white folks to check their misunderstanding and adultification of Black children,” Brown, the Parenting for Liberation founder, said. “For me, it’s about, how do we think about the responsibility as a collective and not put the onus only on Black people to make sure that Black children are safe?”

Finally, there are ways of thinking about kids’ independence and autonomy within a larger context of their connections with others. “Whereas we often prioritize this kind of individualistic development where I take on the world,” Joe said, “that’s not what’s valued for many people in many communities.”

Indeed, a more collectivist approach, one embraced by many cultures both within the US and around the world, teaches children that “your existence in the world is intricately connected to other people,” Joe said. “That allows for the development of empathy, because we recognize we’re not out there living on our own.”

A collectivist view of children’s play might acknowledge that we all have a role in creating communities that are not just safe but joyful, that provide children with opportunities to grow and explore without fear. Most communities in the US don’t look like that right now, but Gray and others believe they can be built, if we have the will and the wherewithal to build them.

 

 

Original article here

27 Jun 2023
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A neuroscientist shares the 4 ‘highly coveted’ skills that set introverts apart: ‘Their brains work differently’

Being the most talkative person in the room may be a good way to get people’s attention, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you have the best ideas.

As a neuroscientist, I’ve worked with large companies like Google and Deloitte on how to attract and retain top talent, and I’ve found that employers tend to favor extroverts.

But there are some surprising strengths that introverts bring to the table, and they shouldn’t be overlooked.

As bestselling author Susan Cain points out in her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking: “Extroverts are more likely to focus on what’s happening around them. It’s as if extroverts are seeing ‘what is,’ while their introverted peers are asking ‘what if.’” 

What sets introverts apart from extroverts

Don’t get me wrong: Both extroverts and introverts have wonderful qualities. But research shows that introverts may have the upper hand.

Here are four highly coveted skills that set introverts apart from everyone else:

1.   Introverts think more.

Gray matter, which exists in the outer most layer of the brain, serves to process and release new information in the brain.

One Harvard study found that introverts’ brains work differently, and have thicker gray matter compared to extroverts. In people who are strongly extroverted, gray matter was consistently thinner. Introverts also showed more activity in the frontal lobes, where analysis and rational thought take place.

Another study that scanned brains of both introverts and extroverts found that, even in a relaxed state, the introverted brain was more active, with increased blood flow.

2.   Introverts can focus longer.

When Albert Einstein — a known introvert — was a child, his teachers thought he was a quiet loner who seemed a million miles away, lost in his thoughts.

Einstein said: “It’s that I stay with problems longer.” This ability to focus intensely is a key characteristic of introverts, who often have more extended focus than extroverts.

Because they enjoy spending time alone, introverts tend to be more willing than extroverts to put in the hours alone necessary to master a skill.

3.   Introverts are often “gifted” in a specific field.

On average, introverts and extroverts are the same in terms of intelligence. But statistics show that around 70% of gifted people are introverts.

People are considered “gifted” when they exhibit above-average intelligence or a superior talent for something, such as music, art or math.

If your workplace is dominated by extroverts who criticize those who prefer to work alone — or skip after-work cocktails — as “not team players,” it may inadvertently alienate gifted people.

4.   Introverts do the right thing.

Introverts tend to be less swayed by external events and driven more by their inner moral compass.

A 2013 study on social conformity found that extroverts are more willing to go along with the opinion of the majority, even if it’s wrong. Extroverts are more likely than introverts to succumb to social pressure.

The researchers concluded: “The higher the pressure, a larger number of conforming responses are given by extroverts.” In contrast, “there is no difference in conforming responses given to high- and low-pressure levels by introverts.”

How to create a workplace where introverts thrive

Introverts are often exhausted in their workplace because many of their colleagues don’t know how to harness the power introversion.

Here’s how managers can create an introvert-friendly workplace:

  • Respect boundaries.It takes up to 23 minutes for a person to regain focus after they’ve been interrupted. Don’t expect people to answer every email or Slack message immediately.
  • Brainstorm alone.Letting people shout ideas at each other in a room sounds like fun. But research shows that if you want to maximize creativity, let people generate ideas by themselves before sharing them in a group. Bonus: Your introverts will be far more comfortable sharing.
  • Shorten meetings.Many introverts, as you can probably guess, are not fans of meetings. Let go of the idea that the entire office has to be invited to every meeting so that no one feels left out.
  • Don’t force a certain type of communication.The introverts in your office may prefer emails, while the extroverts might enjoy handling business on the phone. Encourage people to decide how they want to communicate (e.g., turning cameras on or off), even if it differs from yours.
  • Provide the option of privacy.Extroverts may love to see everybody all the time, but introverts tend to need privacy. The solution is a flexible work environment that provides silence and private space for introverts, and lively, interactive open space for extroverts.

As an introvert, my general message to employers is, “Let my people rest.” Like it or not, the future of work is all about more choices, autonomy, and a culture that embraces introversion.

 

 

Original article here

 

 

24 Jun 2023
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8 Steps To Boost Your Manifestations With Dance

 

Did you know that dancing is not just about grooving to the rhythm but can also be a profound tool for manifesting our desires?

When we surrender ourselves to the music and let our bodies sway, we create a harmonious connection between our physical and energetic selves.

By moving our bodies through dance, we unlock a realm of boundless potential and we:

  • Amplify our energy. Dancing raises our vibrations to align with the frequencies of our desires. As we lose ourselves in the rhythm, our movements become a physical representation of our intentions, sending powerful signals to the universe.
  • Embody our visualizations. With each step, twirl, or leap, we can imagine ourselves already living our desired reality. This visualization helps to reinforce our intentions and brings them closer to manifestation.
  • Release our emotions. When we dance, we tap into our deepest feelings, allowing any stagnant energy or limiting beliefs to be released. By releasing what no longer serves us, we create space for abundance and positive transformations.
  • Align through joy. When we move our bodies freely, we connect with our true essence and align ourselves with the frequency of joy. Joy is a powerful magnet for manifesting our desires, attracting experiences that resonate with our happiness.

Use These 8 Steps To Boost Your Manifestations Through Dance

  1. Set Your Intention. Clarify what it is that you want to manifest. Write it down or hold it firmly in your mind.
  2. Choose Uplifting Music. Select music that resonates with your intention and uplifts your spirits.
  3. Create Sacred Space. Find a quiet and comfortable space where you can move freely without distractions.
  4. Tune Into Your Body. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and center yourself. Allow yourself to be fully present and become aware of any sensations or emotions within you.
  5. Let the Music Guide You. Start playing your chosen music and let the rhythm guide your movements. Trust your body’s natural instincts and let it express itself authentically.
  6. Visualize Your Intention. As you dance, visualize your intention as if it has already manifested. See yourself living the reality you desire. Imagine the details and emotions, and immerse yourself fully in the visualization.
  7. Express Emotion and Gratitude. Allow yourself to express your emotions through movement, whether joy, passion, sadness, or frustration. Also, use the dance to express gratitude for the manifestation already on its way.
  8. Close with Stillness. After your dance, take a moment to stand still and absorb the energy you’ve created. Reflect on the experience and feel the vibrations of your intention radiating throughout your body.

So, let the music guide your intentions, and start moving, shaking, and swirling to get your manifestations in motion.

 

 

 

Original article here

 

21 Jun 2023
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Walking Correctly Takes Work—Here’s How to Improve Every Step

Chances are, you learned to walk when you were just a toddler and you haven’t really thought about it much since. It’s easy to nerd out on other fitness activities, like running or weight lifting. But, walking is something we often take for granted.

During the current pandemic, however, walking is having a moment (this article was written in May 2020). A simple stroll can go a long way to clear the mental cobwebs and stop your fitness tracker from screaming at you due to your newfound Jabba the Hutt lifestyle.

Before you start putting in the miles, it’s worth taking a look at how you walk. After all, it’s a repetitive motion and thousands of steps per day can put a lot of stress on your entire body—not just your legs and feet. Here are some tips from orthopedic experts on how to go for a walk without abusing your body.

Understand the Mechanics

Having a clear idea of what a step actually involves can help you visualize how to walk correctly. Every step happens in two phases: stance and swing. Jessica Rose, a professor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Stanford University and director of the Motion & Gait Analysis Laboratory at the Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital provides the following description: “Typically, the stance phase starts with the leading foot making heel contact with the ground, followed by a heel-toe progression of the weight-bearing foot. The Swing phase starts with rapid hip, knee, and ankle flexion to clear the foot from the ground, the knee then rapidly extends to prepare for the next step. To assist with balance and forward momentum the arms swing in a reciprocal manner, the opposite arm swings forward with the leading foot. A single gait cycle of stance and swing typically lasts about 1-second.”

Your brain does all of that instinctively, but understanding the parts can be valuable in assessing where you might have weaknesses and can help doctors assess any pain you’re having.

Pick the Right Shoes

Choosing the wrong pair of shoes can wreak havoc on your feet, obviously, but those ill-effects can travel all the way up your body. “There’s no perfect shoe for everyone,” says Lew Schon, Director of Orthopedic Innovation Institute of Foot and Ankle Reconstruction at Mercy Medical Center, “but stability is crucial. You don’t want to wear flip-flops or anything that isn’t tight to your foot. They can cause weird stresses and injure your skin.” Blisters from a shoe rubbing against your foot will end your walking initiative in a hurry.

When it comes to padding, though, more isn’t always better. If the sole is too soft, your foot can sink deeply into it and create awkward stresses on your bones and joints and make it difficult to balance. Dr. Schon recommends starting with a standard amount of padding and increasing its thickness if you have a higher body weight. Too much padding, however, can reduce the positive effect the repetitive impacts will have on bone density, which is especially important for older people.

Many shoemakers offer options with corrective structures to try and provide support in needed areas or even correct problems. “You can look at the sole of your shoes and see how your shoes are wearing,” says Wendi Weimar, Director, Sports Biomechanics Laboratory Lab at Auburn. “If they’re wearing too much on the inside, then you might need something that gives you a little more arch support. If they’re wearing more quickly at the heel and causing pain, then you might need a little more cushioning.” She’s careful, however, to explain that it’s not an exact science, especially when you’re doing it on your own. Adding arch support when you have a low arch isn’t necessarily going to fix the issue. A trained orthopedist will use testing and specialized tools.

If you’re unsure about the shape of your step, sticking with a neutral shoe is a good place to start unless you’re having specific pain or are getting a personal assessment.

Tie Your Shoes Correctly

No matter what shoe you buy, tying it correctly will make a big difference in the way it performs. “For a typical eight-eyelet shoe, there are more than 200 ways to tie them based on your feet, walking pattern, and body composition,” says Weimar. “We have tied shoes of people with peripheral neuropathy and it has actually improved the condition. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it.”

Weimar suggests starting with a tying pattern known as the runner’s loop, which helps to pull your foot back into the heel of the shoe to reduce its ability to move around. That will drastically cut down on blisters and reduce the chances of an awkward impact on the wrong part of the sole.

Pay attention to whether you’re favoring one side of your body.

It’s possible for your body to have an injury that you won’t even notice and that can negatively affect your body with every step. “If you find that you lean to one side, this may indicate weakness, pain or injury on that side,” says Rose. “We lean over to the weak or painful side, shifting our center of mass to alleviate forces on that limb.” That imbalance can cause problems throughout the body.

If you start to recognize an imbalance, professionals don’t recommend trying to fix it by forcing yourself into the right position because that could make it worse. Rather, finding the underlying cause with a doctor can help eliminate the source of the problem rather than simply addressing the symptom.

Stand Up Straight

Slouching is almost universally bad, but that’s especially true during a walk. “You want to pull your shoulders back, keep your bum tucked underneath you, and your head parallel to the ground,” says Weimar. “When you lift your chin up and stop slouching, it will automatically help bring your head in line with your pelvis.” If you’re used to slouching at a desk all day (like I am) you may actually find that your back, neck, and shoulder muscles feel sore after a long walk since they’re not used to that kind of engagement.

In order to keep your body upright, muscles throughout your body have to activate. “It involves your abdominal muscles as well as your glutei,” says Rose.” They tend to get neglected, but they keep your trunk and pelvis in a good position.” That’s not to say that you have to squeeze your abs and butt as hard as possible as you walk, but they should be engaged, not relaxed.

Keeping your eyes up and parallel to the horizon will also help you keep your balance, which may suffer if you’re staring at a downward angle.

Don’t Try to Force Your Feet Straight

Your feet likely have a natural angle that prevents them from facing perfectly straight ahead. “Your feet point where your legs tell them to,” says Rose. “It’s not something someone should try to correct on their own, but it is something they should try to understand where it’s coming from.” Forcing your feet forward against their natural rotation can put undue torque on the ankles, hips, and feet.

It can become an issue if you’re pushing off with the wrong part of your foot. ”We want the foot to become the best lever it can be. ” says Weimar. “When you roll off the front of your foot, you want the center of pressure to come off between your big toe and your second toe.” Pushing off too far to one side can cause common issues such as bunions.

Choose the Right Surface and Location for Walking 

A walk around the neighborhood is great if you have the opportunity because it’s quick and doesn’t require driving. But streets aren’t perfectly flat—they’re sloped to improve drainage—and that uneven surface can be an issue in the long term. “Your outside leg strikes the ground lower than your inside leg. That leg close to the curb strikes lower which is going to cause a mismatched pelvic girdle position and get everything out of whack,” says Weimar. “If you walk out on the right side of the road, walk back on the other to try and even those things out.” She also recommends walking on the flatter part of the street instead of directly in the gutter if you can safely avoid it with traffic.

Walking on slightly irregular surfaces like trails can help build strength in the muscles and joints as your legs adapt to the irregular orientations of each strike. Dirt also provides a softer surface that won’t tax your feet and joints as much.

Hit the Hills

Going up and down hills during your walk can crank up the cardiovascular benefits of a walk, but the technique changes slightly. “When you walk up a hill, you want to lean into the hill,” says Weimar. “You want your center of gravity to get a little bit in front of your feet so when you step, the propulsion part of your step is pushing your body up the hill.”

Coming down the hill requires a different kind of effort from your muscles. “That uses eccentric muscle action, which tends to be a lot tougher on the muscle than concentric,” says Weimar. “A lot of people will get sore from walking downhill because of that new loading pattern.” She recommends going slow and trying not to stomp your feet too hard into the ground.

Don’t Over-Stride

Once you’re a more experienced walker, it’s tempting to try and up your pace and distance. But doing too much can cause problems with your stride and limit your workout capabilities. Taking too big of a stride will require your pelvis to rotate too far to step out in front of you. Plus, as Weimar explains, “it puts stress on your lower back and puts a lot of stress on your heel as it impacts the ground. It also takes more energy to get your body up over that lead foot.” Increasing the overall speed of your steps can help you increase your pace without compromising your technique.

 

 

Original article here

18 Jun 2023
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Can We Time Travel? A Theoretical Physicist Provides Some Answers

Time travel makes regular appearances in popular culture, with innumerable time travel storylines in movies, television and literature. But it is a surprisingly old idea: one can argue that the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles over 2,500 years ago, is the first time travel story.

But is time travel in fact possible? Given the popularity of the concept, this is a legitimate question. As a theoretical physicist, I find that there are several possible answers to this question, not all of which are contradictory.

The simplest answer is that time travel cannot be possible because if it was, we would already be doing it. One can argue that it is forbidden by the laws of physics, like the second law of thermodynamics or relativity. There are also technical challenges: it might be possible but would involve vast amounts of energy.

There is also the matter of time-travel paradoxes; we can — hypothetically — resolve these if free will is an illusion, if many worlds exist or if the past can only be witnessed but not experienced. Perhaps time travel is impossible simply because time must flow in a linear manner and we have no control over it, or perhaps time is an illusion and time travel is irrelevant.

Laws of Physics

Since Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity — which describes the nature of time, space and gravity — is our most profound theory of time, we would like to think that time travel is forbidden by relativity. Unfortunately, one of his colleagues from the Institute for Advanced Study, Kurt Gödel, invented a universe in which time travel was not just possible, but the past and future were inextricably tangled.

We can actually design time machines, but most of these (in principle) successful proposals require negative energy, or negative mass, which does not seem to exist in our universe. If you drop a tennis ball of negative mass, it will fall upwards. This argument is rather unsatisfactory, since it explains why we cannot time travel in practice only by involving another idea — that of negative energy or mass — that we do not really understand.

Mathematical physicist Frank Tipler conceptualized a time machine that does not involve negative mass, but requires more energy than exists in the universe.

Time travel also violates the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy or randomness must always increase. Time can only move in one direction — in other words, you cannot unscramble an egg. More specifically, by travelling into the past we are going from now (a high entropy state) into the past, which must have lower entropy.

This argument originated with the English cosmologist Arthur Eddington, and is at best incomplete. Perhaps it stops you travelling into the past, but it says nothing about time travel into the future. In practice, it is just as hard for me to travel to next Thursday as it is to travel to last Thursday.

Resolving Paradoxes

There is no doubt that if we could time travel freely, we run into the paradoxes. The best known is the “grandfather paradox”: one could hypothetically use a time machine to travel to the past and murder their grandfather before their father’s conception, thereby eliminating the possibility of their own birth. Logically, you cannot both exist and not exist.

Kurt Vonnegut’s anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five, published in 1969, describes how to evade the grandfather paradox. If free will simply does not exist, it is not possible to kill one’s grandfather in the past, since he was not killed in the past. The novel’s protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, can only travel to other points on his world line (the timeline he exists in), but not to any other point in space-time, so he could not even contemplate killing his grandfather.

The universe in Slaughterhouse-Five is consistent with everything we know. The second law of thermodynamics works perfectly well within it and there is no conflict with relativity. But it is inconsistent with some things we believe in, like free will — you can observe the past, like watching a movie, but you cannot interfere with the actions of people in it.

Could we allow for actual modifications of the past, so that we could go back and murder our grandfather — or Hitler? There are several multiverse theories that suppose that there are many timelines for different universes. This is also an old idea: in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ebeneezer Scrooge experiences two alternative timelines, one of which leads to a shameful death and the other to happiness.

Time Is a River

Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote that:

Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.

We can imagine that time does flow past every point in the universe, like a river around a rock. But it is difficult to make the idea precise. A flow is a rate of change — the flow of a river is the amount of water that passes a specific length in a given time. Hence if time is a flow, it is at the rate of one second per second, which is not a very useful insight.

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking suggested that a “chronology protection conjecture” must exist, an as-yet-unknown physical principle that forbids time travel. Hawking’s concept originates from the idea that we cannot know what goes on inside a black hole, because we cannot get information out of it. But this argument is redundant: we cannot time travel because we cannot time travel!

Researchers are investigating a more fundamental theory, where time and space “emerge” from something else. This is referred to as quantum gravity, but unfortunately it does not exist yet.

So is time travel possible? Probably not, but we don’t know for sure!

 

 

 

Original article here

 

15 Jun 2023
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Make Peace with Your Unlived Life

Tina was at a crossroads. Her daughter had recently left for college, and her husband had his own pursuits. And although she’d once enjoyed banking, she now bore little interest in her work. For some time, she had been asking herself whether she should quit. But what would her colleagues and bosses think of her?

This stream of consciousness carried Tina to deeper, more revealing questions. What if all her choices had been in response to what others expected? She had always been her parents’ golden child – a star student who married a man they approved of and went into the same industry her father and grandfather had pursued. Now, at the age of 45, she was wondering if these choices were really pseudo-choices, given the pressure her family had put on her? And even more frightening: what other choices did she have at this point in her life?

Tina increasingly began to question herself. Where was all of this coming from? Was there a hidden part of herself she didn’t understand – or maybe even know about? She remembered how as an adolescent she had always been preoccupied with: “What do people want me to do? And who do they want me to be?” Perhaps, the time had come to revisit these questions—to take an honest look at what she really wanted to do, not what others expected her to do. But what did the “True Tina” really want?

The idea of a “true self” and a “false” or “shadow” self has long preoccupied psychologists. For example, Carl Jung introduced the notion of the shadow side of our personality. He viewed “the shadow” as our unknown, dark side—made up of the primitive, negative, socially depreciated human emotions such as sexuality, striving for power, selfishness, greed, envy, jealousy, and anger. But although the shadow personifies everything that we fear, and therefore refuse to acknowledge, it remains a part of us. Jung believed that unless we come to terms with our shadow side, we are condemned to become its unwitting victim.

Similarly, Erik Erikson, another famous psychologist, introduced the idea of the identity crisis. Erikson, like Jung, suggests that identity formation has its dark and negative side. There are parts of us that are attractive but disturbing and therefore tend to be submerged. In the process of becoming an adult, we not only internalize what’s viewed as acceptable, we also internalize (be it only subliminally) parental and societal attitudes about undesirable qualities and characteristics. For many of us, these “undesirables” turn into “forbidden fruits”–things we are attracted to To feel more authentic, we may have to integrate these forbidden fruits into our sense of identity.

Donald Winnicott elaborated on the idea of the “true self” and “false self.” He explained that beginning in infancy, all of us, in response to perceived threats to our well-being, develop a defensive structure that may evolve into a “false self.” He suggests that if our basic needs are not acknowledged—not mirrored back to us by our parents—we may presume they are unimportant. Complying with our parents’ desires, we may repress our own desires, not actualizing what we really like to do. We may believe that non-compliance endangers our role in the family. In addition, we may internalize our parents’ dreams of self-glorification through our achievements. But this acquiescence to the wishes of others is an emotional lie. It comes at the price of suppressing our own needs. In our efforts to please others, we hide and deny our “true self,” which in turn leads to self-estrangement. If that’s the case, the “false self” will get the upper hand. It becomes a defensive armor to keep the “true self” at bay and hidden.

If there is too great a discrepancy between the “true” and the “false” self, it will make for a vulnerable sense of identity. And if we are unable to acquire a stable sense of identity—we may end up one day unraveling as Tina did. After a lifetime of complying to others’ expectations, Tina was experiencing what Erikson would call a delayed identity crisis. At a certain point in her life, it became difficult for her keep up the lie.

What Tina’s case also illustrates is that the journey of identity exploration that often begins at adolescence doesn’t stop there. In her case, the tension between “false self” and “true self” came to a head, contributing to a renewal of the confusion she had experienced at an earlier stage of life. Not living a full, complete life—not integrating these other parts of herself, call it her shadow or negative identity—turned out to be extremely draining, contributing to life choices that didn’t accommodate her real needs. Ignoring her shadow side was taking an enormous amount of energy, depleting her of her inner creativity, and contributed to various stress symptoms, including depressive reactions.

But the “return of the repressed” should not be looked at as a purely negative experience. Although a person might view these parts of herself as a representation of her unlived life, a delayed identity crisis can also contain the seeds of psychological renewal—the motivation to enter new directions in life. Romancing your shadow—accepting these unlived parts of yourself and learning to read the messages that are contained in it—can lead to a deeper level of consciousness, as well as spark your imagination. When a person is ready to accept these parts—and not try to push them aside — she or he may discover all sorts of creative, positive ideas begging for fulfillment. These buried desires will help them to reflect not only on the question of “Who am I?” but also “Who do I want to be?” This can turn a negative spiral of self-pity turned into the opposite.

That’s what happened in Tina’s case. She came to grips with her previous life experiences. She captured her dreams in a journal, and wrote about the associations that came to her. She wrote letters to her past and future self. She told her husband about her dreams and the emotions they evoked. Together, they talked about her feelings of frustration and anxiety. Her husband began sharing some of his dreams with her, as well. Their conversations eventually took a more concrete turn, as they discussed their future together, including their careers, finances, and upcoming life choices. Her self-exploration gave her greater awareness both of her inner theatre and what her life journey had been up till this moment.

Reassured and invigorated, Tina took a hard look at her work responsibilities and saw ways that she could make changes that would benefit the bank as well as herself. She even got into an argument with her father at the dinner table about politics, and to her great surprise, he seemed to respect her opinion.

Most of us find this difficult, confusing work, as Tina did. But learning to sort out our inner demons can be liberating. Questioning, reflecting, and having meaningful conversations with important people in our lives can help us come to terms with our shadow sides and create the rapprochement needed between our “false” and “true” selves. To do this, we have to figure out how to accept what we learn about ourselves without judgment. And to do that, we must approach self-knowledge with curiosity, as if it were a fascinating adventure – an exploration of the riches contained in this previously unknown world inside the self.

 

 

Original article here

 

10 Jun 2023
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How Dreams Reveal Brain Disorders

For 30 years Isabelle Arnulf, head of the sleep disorders clinic at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, has studied sleep and its associated disorders. During her career, Arnulf, who is also a professor of neurology at Sorbonne University in France, has researched a broad range of sleep conditions: sleepwalking, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder, lucid dreaming, sleep in Parkinson’s disease and hypersomnia, or excessive daytime sleepiness. As part of these studies, Arnulf investigated how these disorders affect dream states. In an interview with Scientific American’s French-language sister publication Pour la Science, the neurologist talks about whether depression or trauma affects dreaming and whether one should worry about recurring nightmares.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

 

Our dreams are often bizarre and disturbing and are sometimes frightening. Do some betray a pathology?

Attempts have been made to identify “dream types” that are characteristic of various mental disorders, but this has not gone very far. People with a psychotic disorder, especially people with schizophrenia, have particular dreams that resemble their way of reasoning during the day—flat, disjointed, limited and undiversified content that portrays the dreamer in everyday life situations. Autistic patients also have fairly lackluster dreams, but the reverse is not true; it is not because you have this kind of dream that you are autistic or schizophrenic. In other words, dreams alone are not enough to diagnose mental illness. Some of the characteristics of a dream may yield some hints, however. For example, the frequency of nightmares is generally higher in people with a mental disorder, whether depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Could frequent nightmares provide a warning about a person’s mental health risks?

The link has been particularly well established with the risk of suicide among young people, which has been on the rise in recent years. Doctors are wrong half the time about projecting someone’s suicide risk. This is why recurrent nightmares have recently begun to be included in the diagnosis because they are correlated with a higher risk of suicide. The stakes are high, because this would make it possible to direct young people with depression to get help earlier with programs such as VigilanS, coordinated by Guillaume Vaiva at the Lille University Hospital in France, which monitors people who have attempted suicide to prevent repeat attempts.

Are there specific qualities that characterize the nightmares of depressed people?

In depression, dreams are very negative, mirroring the mental state of depressed people during the day. This parallel was brought to light in the early 2000s by researcher Dieter Riemann and his colleagues at the University of Freiburg in Germany. By analyzing the dreams of depressed patients treated with antidepressants, they discovered that as the treatment began to take effect after several weeks, the content of these dreams became less and less gloomy, and the mood of the patients improved.

At first glance, one might think that the overall tone of the dreams reflects the depressed state of the patient. But things are not so simple, unfortunately, because in the first weeks of treatment, antidepressants often suppress REM sleep—the phase when we dream the most—and it usually takes a month for patients to remember their dreams again. It’s difficult to understand the link between dreams and depression and to know which of the two is influencing the other. To better understand this link, we can study two categories of dreamers—those who have what are called lucid dreams and people with REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD).

What is special about these dreamers?

In RBD, which we have been studying for 15 years, patients try to implement the actions in their dreams: some eat an imaginary sandwich while sleeping, and others struggle in bed, grappling with invisible adversaries. This enactment is usually caused by a lesion of the brain stem, which means that their movements, often inhibited in a normal dream, are not blocked during REM sleep. And this, unfortunately, involves the risk of accident or injury for them or, [say], their spouse because they do not control what they are doing. But this phenomenon also offers direct access to dreams, much more than the often imprecise stories that sleepers tell when they wake up if they remember [their dreams].

What about lucid dreamers?

They actually recognize that they are dreaming without waking up. As a result, it is possible to agree beforehand on a code for them to communicate certain information to us during their dreams.

In one experiment, we asked lucid dreamers to find a swimming pool in their dream and to turn their eyes to the right twice when they dipped underwater and when they emerged. We have thus shown that our breathing during sleep reflects how we breathe in our dreams; the periods spent underwater corresponded to remarkable apneas of the sleepers! But of course, these types of signals are not always easy to arrange in certain dreams—for instance, in an intense sequence of dream events like a chase. Today we try to use simpler signals, asking the dreamer to punctuate the pleasant parts of their dreams with three small smiles and the unpleasant parts with three slight frowns, which we capture with electrodes placed respectively on the zygomaticus muscles and on those of the forehead.

These two categories of dreamers, in any case, offer privileged access to dreams. If we could find a few who suffer from depression—which is what our team member Jean-Baptiste Maranci of Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital is trying to do—then we would have a unique way of studying the links between dreams and mood.

What form would a study take?

One of the characteristics of depressed people is that they wake up sadder in the morning than in the evening, whereas normally it’s the opposite: we tend to be happier when we wake up than when we go to sleep. We therefore believe that sleep and dreams serve to attenuate negative emotions and that this process is dysfunctional in people with depression. Maranci’s project consists of identifying markers associated with positive and negative feelings experienced in dreams, among all the signals recorded in the sleep laboratory. A sudden feeling of joy could, for example, result in a change in cerebral activity that is associated with particular eye movement and increased heart rate and breathing. We conducted this research “live” in lucid dreamers who communicated their emotions through signals agreed on with the team of experimenters. Our idea is then to use artificial intelligence for the analyses in order to take into account a large number of parameters.

After this first phase, we will try to find the emotional markers identified in sleepers like you and me. The goal is to better understand how we regulate our emotions during sleep and how quickly we relive and “digest” negative emotions. Then the same research will be carried out in depressed people in order to determine why this mechanism works badly in them.

What is the “emotional digestion” in dreams?

Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, has suggested that the function of sleep and dreams is to degrade emotional memories of the day—to reset the amygdala (the brain region where the emotions are experienced) to preserve the memories associated with the emotions but without the emotions themselves. This is currently the leading theory.

According to Walker, dreams are a kind of mental theater where we relive the trials that have happened to us but integrated into more or less crazy scenarios. The peculiarities of dreams make this repetition of a day’s events easier to live with. Difficult events are replayed without the physical manifestations of strong emotions. Researchers have observed, for example, sleepers who suffered horrors in dreams (as evidenced by the stories they shared when they woke up). But they didn’t show the slightest quickening of a heartbeat. On the other hand, these events are sometimes mixed with positive or bizarre elements. You might be reprimanded by your boss in the dream when suddenly a kitten comes to lick his ear, which lessens the emotions you’re experiencing in the dream.

In the end, this re-exposure to the events of the day could lead to the progressive extinction of negative emotions. In our brain, a dialogue occurs between the amygdala, which is very strongly activated during REM sleep, the hippocampus, where the information of the day is stored, and the neocortex, the seat of long-term memory. Thanks to this three-way dialogue, the brain stores the new information by ridding it of its emotional context to consolidate it in a more definitive way in the neocortex.

Do you mean that negative dreams are good for us?

Yes, absolutely. But be careful; it is believed that in nightmares, this beneficial mechanism malfunctions to the point of interrupting the dream in progress and waking the sleeper, so the process of emotional integration cannot go to the end. Why does the sleeper wake up? There are several possibilities. Maybe the person was just sleeping badly, or the emotional intensity of the nightmares was too strong. This is particularly the case in post-traumatic stress disorder, following various types of extreme ordeal—torture, war, rape. The emotion to be appeased is then so violent that the brain cannot manage it. It constantly repeats the traumatic memory, which awakens the sleeper. Finally, about 5 percent of the population has had nightmares since birth without anyone knowing how to explain it.

How should one react to a recurring nightmare?

For a long time, we approached recurring nightmares through the prism of psychoanalysis, [which explained them as] unresolved trauma that we would have to work to resolve. But the fact is: we don’t know.

In the case of repeated nightmares, before going to see a psychologist, in my opinion, it is necessary to make a medical diagnosis rather than be diverted down the wrong pathway. When I started my research, a journalist from Le Monde came to see me for a sleep apnea screening. In the course of the conversation, he told me that he has been having the same nightmare for 10 years in which he was sticking his head through the neck of a bottle and choking. With his psychoanalyst, they came to the conclusion that he was reliving his birth. In fact, he was really choking, with one apnea incident each minute of sleep each night. We offered him a CPAP [continuous positive airway pressure] machine, and the nightmares were gone the first night!

In some cases, a psychological origin can be involved. We have bad dreams during a stressful period, probably because the brain has a greater need to digest negative emotions and wants to simulate the threats we face, which is another purported function of dreams.

In general, there are many forms of nightmares, which have different origins and which a doctor will be able to differentiate. Young people who scream at night and sometimes get out of bed are thus subject to night terrors, a disorder that is similar to sleepwalking but that is not associated with mental health problems. Others [experience] a phenomenon of half awakening called “sleep paralysis”: a very unpleasant moment when the sleeper tries to wake up without being able to move, often with the feeling that a harmful creature is crushing their chest or that the person is possessed by a demon. Lack of sleep facilitates this phenomenon. Others who suffer from RBD make the motions of fighting in their bed to defend themselves against lions or attackers. Some nightmares are caused by drug treatments, for which a doctor can offer alternative medications. So it is necessary to exclude each of these possibilities before starting a therapy targeted specifically for nightmares.

Nightmares are not inevitable. We have to stop thinking that all it takes to stop a round of nightmares is to have things go well when we’re awake during the day. Bad nights themselves produce an unpleasant feeling in the morning, and people then fear going to bed and repeating the same scenario, which maintains this vicious cycle. This was shown by several British and North American teams as early as the 1980s. So tackling bad dreams is a therapy in itself that is actually effective.

What are some of the treatments for nightmares?

Techniques such as mental image rehearsal, as well as drug therapies, are highly effective, according to at least one review of scientific literature. The principle is to slightly modify elements of the nightmare and mentally visualize the new scenario before falling asleep. To give you an example, a patient abused by a priest at the age of 11 who came to consult me for another problem told me that she dreams every night that a devil in a red cassock wants to rape her. I suggested that she try to imagine something happening to the devil, perhaps his foot tripping over his cassock or something else. She decided that a large crucifix would fall on him. By mentally repeating this new scenario in the evening, she managed to transform her nightmare and calm herself.

Confronting the bad dream is therefore therapeutic on its own. Although, I repeat, it is better to start by consulting a doctor, ideally a sleep specialist, in order to exclude a number of organic causes. This is all the more important because certain types of dreams point to neurodegenerative pathologies, such as Parkinson’s disease or Lewy body dementia.

Are there dreams that can help diagnose neurodegenerative diseases?

Agitated dreams—those in which patients mimic everything they are experiencing in a dream—are characteristic of RBD. More than 80 percent of patients suffering from this disorder develop a neurodegenerative pathology within 10 to 15 years of the onset of RBD. Most often, it is Parkinson’s disease. In fact, the brain’s failure to inhibit movements during dreams is a sign that the brain is already beginning to be damaged because [this phenomenon] results from the damage to the area of the brain stem that normally inhibits movement. It is therefore a very strong warning sign.

But we must be careful not to confuse this disorder with somnambulism. In RBD, the affected person is rather restless at the end of the night, is generally more than 50 years old and does not get out of bed, whereas a sleepwalker often wanders around the house and is often much younger. Sleepwalking does not signal any hidden disease, neither neurological nor psychiatric. The studies that have investigated it have just observed that patients are slightly more anxious than average.

In general, do people with Parkinson’s have different sorts of dreams?

According to a 2011 study at Egas Moniz Hospital in Lisbon, their dreams have a more aggressive tone and more often involve animals. In addition, the unusual qualities of their dreams appear to correspond to damage in their frontal lobes.

What about people with Alzheimer’s disease?

The difficulty is that they remember their dreams less. In addition, because their cortex is damaged first, the characteristic patterns of sleep are less discernible on their electroencephalograms, which complicates research. Many also awaken early, which doesn’t make things any easier. We only know that there is no physical acting out, unlike in dreams of RBD patients.

This information is crucial because it makes it possible to distinguish Alzheimer’s disease from another pathology, Lewy body dementia, which represents the third leading cause of dementia globally, after Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia. Affecting up to 5 percent of the [older people in the] general population—30 percent of dementia cases—it is manifested by cognitive losses similar to those observed in Alzheimer’s disease and is often confused with it. But [Lewy body dementia] is accompanied by RBD, which is not the case with Alzheimer’s disease. As a result, this readily available biomarker can distinguish between these two dementias, and it is necessary to avoid giving neuroleptics (antipsychotics) to people with Lewy body dementia (which is sometimes done for an Alzheimer’s patient but can be toxic if it is administered to patients with Lewy body disease).

Dreams are therefore likely to provide valuable information about our mental and neurological health. They are still not made use of enough because they have long been the preserve of psychoanalysis. But things are progressing: more and more doctors are interested in them, having understood that taking them into account can help in diagnosis.

 

 

Original article here

29 May 2023
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The big idea: why colour is in the eye of the beholder

In February 2015, a Scottish woman uploaded a photograph of a dress to the internet. Within 48 hours the blurry snapshot had gone viral, provoking spirited debate around the world. The disagreement centred on the dress’s colour: some people were convinced it was blue and black while others were adamant it was white and gold.

Everyone, it seemed, was incredulous. People couldn’t understand how, faced with exactly the same photograph of exactly the same dress, they could reach such different and firmly held conclusions about its appearance. The confusion was grounded in a fundamental misunderstanding about colour – one that, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, shows little sign of disappearing.

For a long time, people believed that colours were objective, physical properties of objects or of the light that bounced off them. Even today, science teachers regale their students with stories about Isaac Newton and his prism experiment, telling them how different wavelengths of light produce the rainbow of hues around us.

But this theory isn’t really true. Different wavelengths of light do exist independently of us but they only become colours inside our bodies. Colour is ultimately a neurological process whereby photons are detected by light-sensitive cells in our eyes, transformed into electrical signals and sent to our brain, where, in a series of complex calculations, our visual cortex converts them into “colour”.

Most experts now agree that colour, as commonly understood, doesn’t inhabit the physical world at all but exists in the eyes or minds of its beholders. They argue that if a tree fell in a forest and no one was there to see it, its leaves would be colourless – and so would everything else. To put it another way: there is no such thing as colour; there are only the people who perceive it.

This is why no two people will ever see exactly the same colours. Every person’s visual system is unique and so, therefore, are their perceptions. About 8% of men are colour-blind and see fewer colours than everyone else; a small number of lucky women might, thanks to a genetic duplication on the X chromosome, be able to distinguish many more than the rest of us.

Animals inhabit very different chromatic worlds too. Most mammals are red-green colour-blind; bulls might be famous for their hatred of red capes, but the colour itself is invisible to them – they are actually enraged by the fabric’s movements. By contrast, most reptiles, amphibians, insects and birds perceive more colours than us. Bees see ultraviolet light, discerning elaborate patterns in flowers that we cannot perceive, while snakes see infrared radiation, detecting the warm bodies of prey from a distance.

 

People generally name only the colours they consider socially or culturally important

 

“Colour,” Umberto Eco once said, “is not an easy matter.” It is indeed elusive and illusive. Pretty much everything we take to be self-evident about it really isn’t self-evident at all. Scientists have shown that the sky isn’t blue, the sun isn’t yellow, snow isn’t white, black isn’t dark and darkness isn’t black.

One cause of the problem – or perhaps its symptom – is language. In English we divide colour space into 11 basic terms – black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, grey, orange and pink – but other languages do things differently. Many don’t have words for pink, brown and yellow, and some use one word for both green and blue. The Tiv people in west Africa use only three basic colour terms (black, white, red), and at least one Indigenous community has no specific words for any colours, only “light” and “dark”.

The vocabulary of these languages isn’t dictated by the prismatic spectrum but, once again, by what is happening inside their speakers’ heads. People generally name only the colours they consider socially or culturally important. The Aztecs, who were enthusiastic farmers, used more than a dozen words for green; the Mursi cattleherders of Ethiopia have 11 colour terms for cows, and none for anything else.

These differences might even influence the colours they see. Debates about linguistic relativity – the extent to which our words shape our thoughts and perceptions – have been rumbling on for decades, and while many scholars have overstated the case for it, some have found persuasive evidence that if you don’t, say, have a word for blue, you will probably find it harder to distinguish.

The meanings of colour are no less socially constructed, which is why a single colour can mean completely different things in different places and at different times. In the west white is the colour of light, life and purity, but in parts of Asia it is the colour of death. In America red is conservative and blue progressive, while in Europe it’s the other way around. Many people today think of blue as masculine and pink as feminine, but only a hundred years ago baby boys were dressed in pink and girls in blue.

When all of this is taken together – the subjective nature of visual perception, the complicating influence of language, the role that social life and cultural traditions play in filtering our understandings of colour – it becomes really rather difficult to reach a conclusion different from that of the 18th-century philosopher David Hume: that, in the end, colour is “merely a phantasm of the senses”.

The ancient Egyptian term for “colour” was iwn – a word that also meant “skin”, “nature”, “character” and “being”, and was represented in part by a hieroglyph of human hair. To the Egyptians, colours were like people – full of life, energy, power and personality. We now understand just how completely the two are entangled. That’s because every hue we see around us is actually manufactured within us – in the same grey matter that forms language, stores memories, stokes emotions, shapes thoughts and gives rise to consciousness. Colour is, if you’ll pardon the pun, a pigment of our imaginations.

 

 

 

Original article here

27 May 2023
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The Dutch solution to busyness that captivated the world

The Hague, where I live, has 11km of gorgeous coastline with rolling dunes and sandy beaches. In summer, I often see locals in Scheveningen or Kijkduin (the city’s most famous beaches) sunbathing, strolling in nature or riding their bikes, then sitting down on one of the many benches available. Sometimes, they’re reading or chatting with their friends, but just as often, they’re engaging in niksen.

Niksen is a Dutch wellness trend that means “doing nothing”. It first caught the attention of the world in 2019 as a way to manage stress or recover from burnout. At the time, many people were complaining about exhaustion and depression caused by overwork and were looking for solutions – which is why concepts such as Japanese ikigai or Danish hygge also entered the English lexicon. As a linguist myself, I loved the idea that you could express the whole concept of doing nothing in one short and easy-to-pronounce word.

In my book Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing, I define it as “doing nothing without a purpose” – so not scrolling on Facebook or engaging in meditation. Whereas mindfulness is about being present in the moment, niksen is more about carving out time to just be, letting your mind wander wherever it wants to go. And as we’re slowly recovering after the pandemic, it’s important to rethink the way we work and spend our time.

Linguistically, niksen (doing nothing) is a verb created from “niks“, which means “nothing”.

“It fits with the tendency of the Dutch language to create verbs out of nouns. From from ‘voetbal’ (football) to voetballen (playing football), from ‘internet’ to internetten, from ‘whatsapp‘ to whatsappen etc. I think this is something that happens in Dutch in particular,” said Monique Flecken, a psycholinguist at the University of Amsterdam, who researches how the languages we speak affect the way we see the world. Essentially, it’s much less work to say “niksen” instead of “to do nothing”. “The Dutch are a practical, direct people and their language reflects that,” she said.

In the Netherlands, the word can be used in a variety of ways, both positive and negative. Flecken said: “A parent might say to their kid, “Zit je weer te niksen?” (Are you doing nothing again?). And I would also say ‘lekker niksen’, which translates to ‘delicious doing nothing’, when talking about an evening blissfully free of any tasks or work.”

To Thijs Launspach, a psychologist, TEDx speaker and author of the book Crazy Busy: Staying Sane in a Stressful World, niksen means “doing nothing or occupying yourself with something trivial as a way of enjoying your own time. Not doing nothing entirely but doing as little as possible,” he said, pointing out that this mostly applies to elderly people who have more unstructured free time. Younger generations, on the other hand, are more stressed out than ever – even in the Netherlands, a country traditionally applauded for its work-life balance.

 

It’s not necessarily bad to be for a moment in a state of stress, where you’re really on and focused. The problem is when this is getting out of hand

 

There are plenty of reasons for that. “Our lives and our jobs have become increasingly complex. We tend to spend a lot of time with computers. There is a lot of pressure on being the best version of yourself, be it in our jobs, or the expectations of parents [or] from social media. There is a lot of pressure to perform,” Launspach said.

Of course, some stress can be good, as Leiden University psychology professor Bernet Elzinga points out. “It’s not necessarily bad to be for a moment in a state of stress, where you’re really on and focused. The problem is when this is getting out of hand,” she said. But niksen can help with that. “When you do nothing, you connect to your default mode network. And that network is responsible for mind-wandering and reflection,” Elzinga explained.

Paradoxically, niksen can also make us more productive, simply because breaks allow our brains to rest and come back with better focus and sustained attention. This is probably why, while the Dutch don’t work long hours, they tend to be very efficient at work. Working overtime is not encouraged due to the “just be normal, that’s already crazy enough” attitude prevalent in the Netherlands – a nod towards the country’s honest and egalitarian culture.

And it seems to work: the Dutch are a creative nation. Just think of all the famous painters like Rembrandt, Vermeer or Escher, as well as the innovative solutions the Dutch have found to battle the recurring threat of floods, such as huge dams and floating houses.

The Dutch also like to enjoy life, as shown by the word lekker. This means “delicious” but can be used to refer to anything nice and pleasant, like lekker warm(deliciously warm), lekker slapen (sleeping deliciously), and, of course, lekker niksen, or “deliciously doing nothing”. This available architecture of leisure makes it more possible for people to do nothing more easily.

Locals like spending their time in active ways, such as cycling or hiking, allowing time for clearing the mind. And each time the sun comes out, the Dutch flock to cafes and terraces en masse, even in the winter. For me, these are perfect places for doing nothing.

However, Launspach is not a fan of doing nothing as a stress-preventing measure. “I’m a little bit sceptical of the idea that you should create a buffer between you and stress. I don’t know if that’s even possible in the way that we live and work now,” he said.

Elzinga believes that it’s much better to do some sort of physical activity to distract you from your daily worries, preferably in nature. But luckily, in the Netherlands, there is a way to combine all these things – niksen, nature and movement.

While the country is not commonly known for its natural resources , the Dutch appreciate the little natural areas they have. Many dune areas – my favourite thing about The Netherlands – are a part of a large network of hiking and cycling routes crisscrossing the country. Even in large cities such as Rotterdam, The Hague or Amsterdam, you’re never too far away from a trail.

In a cooperation with the Dutch Railway system, Wandelnet – a foundation devoted to creating and maintaining hiking routes – has created NS Wandelingen, a system of hiking routes that are easy to reach by train or other public transport. They range between 7km and 22km in length, making them perfect for a day trip. And given the many benches along the way, it’s even possible to fit in a little niksen break.

This leisure time is possible for the Dutch because the Netherlands is a country with an excellent welfare system, and while people tend to work hard, they also take (and are granted) many days off.

“Having a good social support system, having lower stress level relates to feeling secure and in balance. So, I wouldn’t overestimate the importance of that,” said Elzinga.

And with everything going on in the world – the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine – relieving stress is more important than ever.

 

 

Original article here

22 May 2023
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How To Worry Less And Enjoy Your Life More

 

Did you know that worrying is like a rocking chair?

It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.

Excessive worrying is exhausting and can become a great waste of time and energy. It puts your mind in overdrive and distracts you from doing the more important things, as well as preventing you from having a healthy, happy life.

Most people worry on a regular basis, as a natural part of life. However, the worry habit can become problematic when it becomes too intense and chronic. Some people even worry about worrying. When you are plagued by thoughts that are persistent and out of control, they end up causing interference and paralysis in your daily life.

The bad news is that constant worrying eventually takes a toll on your emotional and physical health, as well as your self-esteem, relationships, and career. When you keep hitting the panic button, the stress response is triggered, which leads to fear, then more stress and anxiety, and then more worry. An endless worry cycle is created.

The good news is that worrying is a mental habit that can be broken. You can train your brain to stay calm and remain positive. You are in charge of your thoughts and imagination. How you choose to use your mind is your responsibility. Do you continue to misuse your imagination and keep focusing on the negative or do you choose to switch to the positive?

The reason most people worry too much is often rooted in fear – ultimately a fear of something happening that cannot be controlled. When we anticipate something negative happening in the future, it is based on irrational thoughts. We are afraid of the worst-case scenario, as we have allowed our minds to wander too far on the negative side.

9 Practical Tips To Minimize Worrying 

  • Learn to distinguish between what you can control in life and what you can’t. The things you can change need an action plan with a list of concrete steps you can take to solve the problem. And for the things you cannot change, you need to learn acceptance. The Serenity Prayer sums it up perfectly: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
  • Recognize your trigger points. Find out the source of your worries and gain a clearer picture of what’s driving them. Your worries will start losing power, and you will start regaining control of your mind. Self-awareness is the first step to changing your mindset.
  • Re-frame your thoughts and change your perspective. Instead of saying, “I can’t handle this,” become more self-confident and start believing that you can handle it. Make a list of the negative messages you are feeding your mind and replace them with positive affirmations. Make sure you challenge those thoughts. No amount of worrying will make life any more predictable.
  • Break the worry cycle by limiting your worrying time. Schedule a worry time each day to keep the worry contained and prevent it from contaminating your whole day. Sit down for 15 minutes and make a list of all the things you want to worry about, and then proceed to worry about them. At the end of the exercise, you will come to the realization that worrying is futile. You can become more mindful of your thoughts and where you place your energy. Choose to focus on what really matters in your life and become more productive.
  • Get up and move. Take a 20-minute walk. Stretch out and do some yoga. Exercise is a productive activity that can interrupt your worries and shift your body’s energy. It releases endorphins, which get rid of the tension and break the cycle.
  • Breathing exercises, meditation and relaxation techniques also interrupt your train of thoughts and calm the body’s response to stress. This dynamic trio helps relax your body, guide your thoughts, and keep them from getting caught up in worries.
  • Ground yourself in the present. Become mindful of your thoughts and activities. Make time to unplug and take a look at the bigger picture. Ask yourself if what you are worrying about is really going to matter in five years from now. If not, let it go and don’t spend more than five minutes worrying about it. If it does matter, then make a list of one or two things you can do now to solve the problem. Keep in mind, you may not resolve the whole problem right then and there, but at least your thoughts will be clearer and calmer, and you will be able to move forward by focusing on what matters instead of worrying about things that don’t really matter.
  • Stop overthinking and dwelling on your worries by finding a healthy distraction like reading a good book, watching a funny movie, listening to great music, taking up hobbies that you enjoy, or doing something different, such as trying a new recipe.
  • Build a support network. Enlist the help of your trusted friends and family. By sharing your thoughts and tuning into your feelings, it can help you process them as you feel supported. In some cases, chronic worry can be a symptom of GAD or generalized anxiety disorder. You can seek the help of a therapist or join a support group. Don’t keep your worries to yourself. This will cause them to build up and become overwhelming.

Next time you catch yourself worrying, instead of pressing the panic button, reach for the pause button and ask yourself, “What’s important now?” Coach Lou Holtz came up with the acronym W.I.N. or What’s Important Now. This enables you to prioritize your decisions, choices and actions. The antidote for worrying is to maintain calm, clarity, and focus. Also, by having a grateful mind, you can look for the positive in every situation.

Strengthen your mind by learning to turn off those worrying thoughts and regain control. Look at life from a less fearful and more balanced perspective.

 

 

Original article here