shift | Ascension Lifestyle

15 Mar 2024
Comments: 0

What’s Up Universe? Episode 1

I have been pals with the Universe for quite some time now. It wasn’t always that way, but it sure has been over the last 30 years after discovering that all kinds of super intelligence dwelt in the spaces between the stars.

So the Universe and I would like to pass along some greater understanding of what’s happening with the majestic Earth right now. Why? Because there are many views of what’s occurring now on Earth, ranging from climate crisis to healing the Earth to dealing with karma … but none of those match up with the power and beauty of what is actually going on that involves us all.

You see, the Earth and all Life upon it is in the throes of an upgrade, a quantum leap, a burst of becoming the likes of which we may never have seen before.

All of Life has become Source Sentient.

All Life, including the Earth as a sentient Source being, is discovering the unleashing of a new miraculousness. Inside this miraculous unfolding, the Earth is bursting forth in a new kind of Glory. Green is GREENER than ever before. Flowers grow taller and more luxuriant with COLOUR that shouts of wonder unfurling into our senses.

Infinite intelligence is now available to all living beings … and that includes all the life forms here with us. Oceans, forests, mycelium networks, the animal kingdoms … all showing us new possibilities of Life as an intelligent emergence.

And on top of all of that, a reunification has just happened. Every being sent forth from the original Source of Creation has just been called back into unificence, sharing their aeons of journeys, knowledge & wisdom into a new collective intelligence that surprisingly seems to have simultaneously embedded itself into our deep inner cores.

This reunification is about to lead to yet another quantum leap of intelligence, super powers, abilities, genius & connection here on Earth.

For we are no longer products of our pasts, our genetics, our learning and our experiences. We are quantum possibilities unfurling into an ever increasingly wondrous becoming. We are a new quantum future bursting into being!

About the Author

Soleira Green is a visionary author, quantum coach, ALLchemist & future innovator. She has been creating leading edge breakthroughs in consciousness, quantum evolution, transformation, innovation, intelligence and more over the past 25 years, has written and self-published eleven books, and taught courses all over the world on these topics.

09 Mar 2024
Comments: 0

What You Need to Know About Off-Gassing

The client wasn’t super-wealthy, but she was thoughtful about her home and hands down the most eco-conscious woman Colorado interior designer Megan Thompson had ever met. The 30-something vegan was asking for Thompson’s help with two flooring projects: She wanted wall-to-wall carpeting upstairs in and around her family’s bedrooms, and she was looking to turn a small area downstairs into a yoga/meditation room, preferably with easy-to-clean, budget-friendly, wood-mimicking vinyl.

Carpet and vinyl. Thompson, who recently made a personal pledge that at least 80% percent of her projects will be 100% environmentally sustainable, saw this as a teaching moment.

“Okay, I want to tell you about some things,” she recalls telling her client, going on to carefully explain the dangers inherent in both flooring choices—primarily the health impacts of chemical inhalants. Not only would these chemicals flood a home during the installation of new carpet or vinyl planks, but they would continue to gradually leach into the air for years to come—a more subtle (but dangerous) process referred to as off-gassing. Thompson didn’t want her client’s family exposed to a vapor stew of chemicals every day, least of all in the yoga space, where the whole point was to breathe deeply while near the floor.

She offered her client some carefully sourced options such as an all-wool carpet with a natural rubber pad, and advocated for solid, sustainably sourced wood downstairs instead of a composite of plastics. “I thought she’d be excited,” Thompson says. “But because of her beliefs about animal rights, I learned that wool wasn’t acceptable to her…and there were price point issues too. I thought, ‘Wow, this is a whole new level I hadn’t encountered.’”

Welcome to what materials experts call “one of the most complicated issues in health and wellness,” the murky and unregulated (at least in the U.S.—Europe is much stricter) relationships humans have with thousands of airborne toxins emanating from our building materials, furnishings, cleaning products, car interiors, iPads, and even candles.

“Nobody’s telling you what is coming from all those vapors mixing in the air,” says Jillian Pritchard Cooke, the founder of Wellness Within Your Walls, an education consultancy focused on dramatically reducing the dangers of off-gassing in the built environment. “It’s up to us to understand the individual effects each chemical can have on your nervous system, your lungs, and your cellular makeup. We need to be doing right by our clients.”

Designers have, of course, been aware of the dangers of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) for a long time, and have helped influence some wins in the marketplace, like the rising popularity of low- or no-VOC paints and the 2015 ban Home Depot and Lowe’s instituted in 2015 on toxic phthalates (a class of industrial chemicals that help make plastic bendy) in flooring.

But the problem endures, and unfortunately, many of the worst effects of VOCs—showing up in health conditions—accumulate over long periods of time.

According to Susan Inglis, executive director of the Sustainable Furnishings Council, a coalition of industry professionals dedicated to safer, greener home furnishings, “We’re learning more now and the news is discouraging—harmful chemicals are persistent and linked directly to health problems, and we can keep using them forever! The chemical lobby is very powerful in this country and they don’t want to be regulated, that’s why. It’s just plain up to us.

So, how do you get a handle on what’s happening here, and what are the best strategies to reduce emissions that can trigger asthma, cognitive impairment, or worse? We asked that question of professional air quality assessors, experienced sustainability managers, and green-minded designers around the country, collecting their current wisdom on tools, measurement techniques, and simple tactics that can protect clients from invisible airborne poisons.

So what is off-gassing, anyway? Super simply, it’s the airborne release of a chemical, a chemical in vapor form. Whenever you smell a product, it’s off-gassing. It happens the most when a product is new. Fresh paint odor? Off-gassing. New memory-foam smell? Off-gassing. But many products or materials continue off-gassing even after the “new smell” has gone away—the fumes are just much more subtle.

What are the dangers? Chemical companies will tell you that everything off-gasses, that pineapples and roses are off-gassing. But of course, some fumes are more toxic than others, and the chemicals from plastics and adhesives tend to be the worst. Prolonged exposure can cause headaches, respiratory illnesses, hormone disruption, and a variety of cancers. Here’s a list of the worst offenders and their potential impacts.

There have been cases where toxic chemicals became so infiltrated in a building’s walls, floors, and HVAC system that a simple “airing out” couldn’t fix it. Severe air quality problems shut down an Illinois driver’s license center in 2015. Sick Building Syndrome is less common now, but airtight structures (think tall glass towers) are at higher risk than buildings with operable windows.

Who is at risk? All of us, but especially babies and school-age children, whose physiological systems are still in development. Adults with weak immune systems or respiratory problems often exhibit stronger responses to off-gassing. And any living creature who spends a lot of time near the floor (where flooring and carpets—in addition to their backings or adhesives—off-gas) is at higher risk, especially babies, toddlers, and household pets.

How do I know if the products I source off-gas? Contaminant-wary designers like Thompson in Denver and Jennifer Jones of Niche Interiors in San Francisco have spent years compiling their own personal spreadsheets of safer products (especially nontoxic adhesives and stain treatments) and vendors (especially installers) who share their off-gassing concerns. Luckily now, industry-wide databases are evolving to help. One of the most promising is Mindful Materials, a constantly updated, searchable library of more than 10,000 products with verified labeling information. It’s a nice companion to product and strategy advice at certification bodies such as GreenGuard, WELL, and the Living Building Challenge.

New products I understand, but what about antiques or vintage items? One of the best arguments for incorporating vintage pieces in design, apart from saving space in landfills and decreasing carbon emissions, is that they are far safer from an off-gassing perspective. Recycling building materials (for instance, saving the doors during a retrofit) helps too.

How do I know if my project is safe? Ravi Bajaj is a project manager at Healthy Buildings, a diagnostics firm that conducts two general kinds of air-quality tests: the chamber test (when you place an item—say, a whole couch or a laptop—in a sealed lab chamber and collect off-gassing data over hours, days, or weeks) and on-site evaluations (involving physical checks on things like air filters as well as professional air sampling over time). Most of his clients are commercial real estate firms collecting air-quality data to protect themselves from lawsuits, but knowing what he knows, Bajaj would like that to change. “Schools and homes are where we’d love to see more work done,” says Bajaj.

It’s often just a money issue: Professional assessments can cost between $2,000 and $3,000 annually.

That is expensive. Is there a low-cost option? Michelle Amt, sustainability director at VMDO architects in Charlottesville, Virginia (a firm specializing in the safe design of schools), recommends a variety of devices that can at least serve as a first sniff test, detecting any major problems in VOCs, CO2 levels, etc. She uses AWAIR monitors (tagline: “See the Invisible”) that come with an app so she can remotely collect data on her phone. Foobot and Kaiterra offer consumer-grade air sensors as well.

Bajaj and Amt warn that once you begin measuring, you may be shocked…or confused. Amt once saw VOC levels skyrocket one morning in a university classroom and found out later that someone had simply uncapped a whiteboard marker. Even fragrant body spray can activate some detectors. But they say that if you measure consistently over time, you’ll start seeing trends, good or bad.

What can I do about off-gassing going forward? Preventing toxic inhalants from entering a home, school, or office space in the first place is perhaps the first and most important off-gassing strategy for designers today. VOCs plummet when you are using solid wood instead of composite furniture, sourcing fabrics without chemical stain repellents, and making it a practice to add recycled or vintage pieces (which off-gassed long ago) to a design plan.

Jillian Pritchard Cooke suggests that designers plan ahead to slow down installs so that each new building material or piece of decor has time to shed its early fumes before occupants move in. She advocates for designers to use a warehouse or a well-ventilated porch/garage to off-gas individual items, thereby preventing a complicated mix of chemicals in the air. And she encourages interior designers to take an advisory role, encouraging clients and architects to make sure each space has plenty of fresh air intake and circulation, which can be challenging in this age of tightly sealed, energy-efficient offices and condos.

Consistently asking vendors for their most low-VOC, PVC-free product options (you’ll find innovations now in traditionally PVC-heavy products, like roller shades) is another effective strategy, according to Inglis. She’s seen the marketplace shift dramatically just because designers—even the smallest businesses—kept up the pressure on manufacturers when the government wouldn’t. All this serves to widen the scope of change even more. Amt says that when designers refuse to purchase toxic materials, the supply chain adjusts all the way back to the source, and can even help to alter dangerous factory conditions for workers outside the U.S.

“There is equity and social justice in play here too,” says Amt. “We have a voice, and industry is listening. So what will we do with it?”

Original article here

17 Feb 2024
Comments: 0

What if public housing were for everyone?

Quietly and with little fanfare, the idea of building new publicly owned housing for people across the income spectrum has advanced in the United States.

Governments have successfully addressed housing shortages through publicly developed housing in places like Vienna, Finland, and Singapore in the past, but these examples have typically inspired little attention in the US — which has more restrictive welfare policies and a bias toward private homeownership.

Then one US community started exploring social housing with a markedly more American twist: Leaders in Montgomery County, Maryland — a suburban region just outside Washington, DC, with more than 1 million residents — said they could increase their local housing supply not by ramping up European-style welfare subsidies but through essentially intervening in the traditional capitalist bidding process. Government, when it wants to, can make attractive bids.

Now, with an acute nationwide housing shortage, and declining home construction due to high interest rates, the idea is spreading, and more local officials have been moving forward with plans to create publicly owned housing. They are very clear about not calling it “public housing”: To help differentiate these projects from the typical stigmatized, income-restricted, and underfunded model, leaders have coalesced around calling the mixed-income idea “social housing” produced by “public developers.”

“What I like about what we’re doing is all we have effectively done is commandeered the private American real estate model,” Zachary Marks, the chief real estate officer for Montgomery County’s housing authority, told me in 2022. “We’re replacing the investor dudes from Wall Street, the big money from Dallas.”

By offering private companies more favorable financing terms, Montgomery County hoped to move forward with new construction that they’d own for as long as they liked. They had plans to build thousands of publicly owned mixed-income apartments by leveraging relatively small amounts of public money to create a revolving fund that could finance short-term construction costs. Eighteen months ago, this “revolving fund” plan was still mostly just on paper; no one lived in any of these units, and whether people would even want to live in publicly owned housing was still an open question.

Answers have since emerged: The first Montgomery County project opened in April 2023, a 268-unit apartment building called The Laureate, and tenants quickly came to rent. It’s not the kind of public housing most Americans are familiar with: It has a sleek fitness center, multiple gathering spaces, and a courtyard pool. “We’re 97 percent leased today, and it’s just been incredibly successful and happened so fast,” Marks said.

Encouraged by the positive response, Montgomery County has been barreling forward with other social housing projects, like a 463-unit complex that will house both seniors and families, and another 415-unit building across from The Laureate set to break ground in October. While construction has lagged nationwide as the Federal Reserve worked to rein in inflation, private developers in Montgomery County have been able to partner with the local government, enticed by their more affordable financing options.

As word started to get around, city leaders elsewhere began reaching out, curious to learn about this model and whether it could help their own housing woes. Montgomery County was getting so many inquiries, they decided to host a convening in early November, inviting other officials — from places like New York City, Boston, Atlanta, and Chicago —to tour The Laureate and talk collectively about the public developer idea. Roughly 60 people were in attendance.

“I am very bought into the Zachary Marks’s line that there is every reason for cities to be building up a balance sheet of real estate equity and we should be capturing that and using it to reinvest in public goods,” said one municipal housing leader who attended the Montgomery County conference and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. “That’s the vision — and you can just describe it in so many ways. You can say we’re socializing real estate value for public use, or you can describe it as we’re doing public-private partnerships to invest in our communities.”

Paul Williams, who leads the Center for Public Enterprise, a think tank supportive of social housing, said growing interest in the public developer model has even led to new conversations with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. “Public agencies are clearly hungry for tools that allow them to produce a lot more housing, and in the past year and a half we’ve gone from working with Montgomery County and Rhode Island to establishing a working group with a few dozen state and municipal housing agencies who come to our regular meetings,” he told Vox. “That’s gotten HUD’s attention, and we’re now talking with them about ways the federal government can support this kind of innovation.”

Atlanta’s leaders are on track to implement the Montgomery County model

Perhaps no city has run as fast with the Montgomery County idea than Atlanta, Georgia. The city’s mayor, Andre Dickens, took office in early 2022 and set an ambitious goal to build or preserve 20,000 affordable housing units within his eight-year term. The Dickens administration wanted to find ways to do this that didn’t depend on the whims of Republicans in the state legislature or federal government.

One of the key strategies Dickens’s team has embraced is making use of property the city already owns, such as vacant land. “We did not have a good sense of what we had, what we did not have, and what was the best use for any of it,” said Josh Humphries, a senior housing adviser to the mayor.

The Dickens administration convened an “affordable housing strike force” to get a better understanding of the city’s inventory and started studying affordable housing models around the world, including social housing in Vienna and Copenhagen. Atlanta leaders also participated in a national program called Putting Assets to Work and learned about the efforts in Montgomery County.

Humphries said what “really sealed the deal” on social housing for them was simply the scarcity of alternative tools to build affordable housing, since they were already exhausting all the available funding they had from the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC).

By the summer of 2023, armed with money from a city housing bond, the Atlanta Housing Authority’s board of commissioners voted to create a new nonprofit that would help build mixed-income public housing for the city. Leaders estimate it could lead to 800 new units by 2029.

Atlanta’s first bid for private-market developers to construct social housing went out last month, and Humphries says they’re excited about how their new financing could spark new partnerships. “The combination of tools that we plan to use that are similar to what they’re doing in Montgomery County, like being able to decrease property taxes and have better interest rates in your financing, is very enviable,” Humphries said. “It has allowed us to have conversations with market-rate developers who maybe otherwise wouldn’t be interested because they haven’t been able to figure out how to make their other [private-sector] projects work.”

Boston wants to move forward with social housing, and Massachusetts might help

Since 2017, Boston has been working to redevelop some of its existing public housing projects by converting them into denser, mixed-income housing. Kenzie Bok, who was tapped by the city’s progressive mayor last spring to lead the Boston Housing Authority, said that existing work helped pave the way for leaders to more quickly embrace the Montgomery County model. As in Atlanta, Bok and her colleagues have been trying to figure out how to build more affordable housing when they have no more federal tax credits available.

“I think everyone in the affordable housing community is looking around and saying, ‘Gee, we have this [low-income housing tax credit] engine for development but it doesn’t have capacity to meet the level we need,’” Bok told me. And while the federal government could increase the tax credit volume, that requires action in Washington, DC, that for years has failed to materialize.

Bok grew interested in the Montgomery County model since it seemed to offer a way for her city to augment its affordable housing production without Congress. Bok was also intrigued by the potential of the revolving fund to spur more market-rate construction in Boston, which has slowed not only because of rising interest rates but also because institutional investors typically demand such high rates of return.

“The default assumption is that affordable units are hard to build and market-rate ones will build themselves from a profit-motive perspective,” Bok said. “In fact, we have a situation now where ironically it’s often affordable LIHTC units that can get built right now and other projects stall out.”

Bok and her colleagues realized it’s not that mixed-income projects don’t generate profits — those profits just aren’t 20 percent or higher. Mixed-income affordable housing wouldn’t need to be produced at a loss, Boston leaders concluded, they just might not be tantalizing to certain aggressive real estate investors. By creating a revolving fund and leveraging public land to offer more affordable financing terms, Boston officials realized they could help generate more housing — both affordable and market-rate.

In January, in her State of the City address, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu pledged to grow the city’s supply of public housing units by about 30 percent in the next 10 years, with publicly owned mixed-income housing being one way to get there.

To help move things forward, state lawmakers are also exploring the idea. This past fall, Massachusetts’s governor put placeholder language in a draft housing bond bill to support social housing and a revolving fund. The specifics are likely going to be hashed out later this spring, but the governor’s bond bill is widely expected to pass.

In Rhode Island, too, state-level interest in supporting the notion of publicly developed affordable housing has grown. Stefan Pryor, the state’s secretary of housing, attended the Montgomery County, Maryland conference in November, and Rhode Island recently announced it would be contracting with the Furman Center, a prominent housing think tank at New York University, to study models of social housing. “We look forward to the study’s observations and findings,” Pryor told Vox.

Can mixed-income housing help those most in need?

Lawmakers intrigued by what Montgomery County is doing praise the fact that publicly owned mixed-income housing units theoretically offer affordable units to their communities forever, unlike affordable housing financed by the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit that can convert into market-rate rentals after 15 years. Leaders also like that after some initial upfront investment, the publicly owned projects start to pay for themselves, even delivering economic returns to the city down the line.

But while housing complexes like The Laureate can offer real relief to struggling middle-class tenants — a quarter of The Laureate’s units are restricted to those earning 50 percent or less of the area median income — an outstanding question is whether the social housing model could also help those who are lower-income, who might require even more deeply subsidized housing.

In Washington, DC, some lawmakers have been exploring the social housing idea, and one progressive council member introduced a bill calling to support mixed-income housing accessible to those making 30 percent or less of the area’s median income. But critics of the bill say that the rents of those living in nonsubsidized units would have to be so high to make that rental math work.

A housing official speaking on the condition of anonymity told me they think it’s okay if the social housing model can only really work to support more middle-class tenants in neighborhoods that charge higher rents because leaders still have financing tools to build more deeply affordable housing in lower-cost areas. In other words, social housing can grow the overall pie of affordable units throughout a city.

Other leaders, like in Boston and Atlanta, told me they’re exploring how they could “layer” the mixed-income social housing model with additional subsidies to make them more accessible to lower-income renters.

Marks, from Montgomery County, knows there’s still a lot of stigma and reservations about American public housing, which many perceive as being ugly, dirty, or unsafe. Few understand that many of the woes of existing public housing in the US have had to do with rules Congress passed nearly 100 years ago, such as restricting the housing to only the very poor. Besides getting his message out, Marks said he likes to just have people come see for themselves what’s being done.

“The temperature immediately comes down when people can walk around, see how attractive it is, how it’s clearly a high-quality community with nice apartments,” he said. “It’s why getting proof of concept is so important.”

Original article here

13 Feb 2024
Comments: 0

The ’20-5-3′ Rule Prescribes How Much Time to Spend Outside

The herd of 400-pound caribou was running 50 miles an hour and directly at me. The 30 animals had been eating lichen in the Arctic tundra in Alaska when something spooked them. I was sitting in their escape route. The ground began to vibrate once they cracked 100 yards. At 50 yards, I could see their hooves smashing the ground and kicking up moss and moisture. Then they were at 40 yards, then 35.

I could hear their breathing, smell their coats, and see all the details of their ornate antlers. Just as I was wondering if the rescue plane would be able to spot my hoof-pocked corpse, one of the caribou noticed me and swerved. The herd followed, shaking the earth as they swept left and summited a hillcrest, their antlers black against a gold sky.

That moment when those caribou shook the earth also shook my soul. It was transcendent, wild as a religious experience. And it’s not even the most intense thing I did in Alaska. I experienced savage weather, crossed raging rivers, and faced a half-ton grizzly. My brain was feeling less hunkered down in its typical foxhole—a state I’d compare to that of a roadrunner on meth, dementedly zooming from one thing to the next. My mind felt more like it belonged to a monk after a month at a meditation retreat. I just felt . . . better. The biologist E. O. Wilson put what I was feeling this way: “Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive, and even spiritual satisfaction.”

When I returned from the wild, my Zen-like buzz hung around for months. To understand what was happening, I met with Rachel Hopman, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at Northeastern University. She told me about the nature pyramid. Think of it like the food pyramid, except that instead of recommending you eat this many servings of vegetables and this many of meat, it recommends the amount of time you should spend in nature to reduce stress and be healthier. Learn and live by the 20-5-3 rule.

20 Minutes

That’s the amount of time you should spend outside in nature, like a neighborhood park, three times a week. Hopman led a new study that concluded that something as painless as a 20-minute stroll through a city botanical garden can boost cognition and memory as well as improve feelings of well-being. “But,” she said, “we found that people who used their cell phone on the walk saw none of those benefits.”

Other research discovered that 20 minutes outside three times a week is the dose of nature that had the greatest effect on reducing an urban dweller’s levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

In nature, our brains enter a mode called “soft fascination.” Hopman described it as a mindfulness-like state that restores and builds the resources you need to think, create, process information, and execute tasks. It’s mindfulness without the meditation. A short daily nature walk—or even a walk down a tree-lined street—is a great option for people who aren’t keen on sitting and focusing on their breath. But turn off your phone—alerts from it can kick you out of soft-fascination mode.

5 Hours

The minimum length of time each month you should spend in semi-wild nature, like a forested state park. “Spending more time in wilder spaces does seem to give you more benefits,” said Hopman.

A 2005 survey conducted in Finland found that city dwellers felt better with at least five hours of nature a month, with benefits increasing at higher exposures. They were also more likely to be happier and less stressed in their everyday lives.

The Finnish government then funded another study in 2014 in which the scientists dumped people in a city center, a city park, and a forested state park. The two parks felt more Zen than the city center. No shocker. Except that those walking in a state park had an edge over the city-park people. They felt even more relaxed and restored. The takeaway: The wilder the nature, the better.

Nature has these effects on the mind and body because it stimulates and soothes us in unusual and unique ways. For instance, in nature you are engulfed in fractals, suggested Hopman. Fractals are complex patterns that repeat over and over in different sizes and scales and make up the design of the universe. Think: trees (big branch to smaller branch to smaller branch and so on), river systems (big river to smaller river to stream and so on), mountain ranges, clouds, seashells. “Cities don’t have fractals,” said Hopman. “Imagine a typical building. It’s usually flat, with right angles. It’s painted some dull color.” Fractals are organized chaos, which our brains apparently dig. In fact, scientists at the University of Oregon discovered that Jackson Pollock’s booze-and-jazz-fueled paintings are made up of fractals. This may explain why they speak to humans at such a core level.

Nature lifts us in other ways, too: Think smells and sounds. The feeling of the sun’s warm rays. Or just the fact that you’re getting out of the stress of your home or office. “It’s probably a mix of a lot of things,” said Hopman. Environments like cities, with their frenetic pace, right angles, loud noises, rotten smells, pinging phones, and to-do lists, don’t offer this.

3 Days

This is the top of the pyramid. Three is the number of days you should spend each year off the grid in nature, camping or renting a cabin (with friends or solo). Think: places characterized by spotty cell reception and wild animals, away from the hustle and bustle.

This dose of the wildest nature is sort of like an extended meditation retreat. Except talking is allowed and there are no gurus. It causes your brain to ride alpha waves, the same waves that increase during meditation or when you lapse into a flow state. They can reset your thinking, boost creativity, tame burnout, and just make you feel better.

This is likely why one study found that three days in the wild boosts creativity and problem-solving abilities and another found that U. S. military vets who spent four days white-water rafting were still buzzing off the wild a week later. Their PTSD symptoms and stress levels were down 29 and 21 percent, respectively. Their relationships, happiness, and general satisfaction with their lives all improved as well.

When I returned from Alaska, my wife and I moved to the edge of the desert in Las Vegas. She wanted a shorter commute, and I wanted more access to nature. I now walk my dogs through red-rock trails for at least 20 minutes daily and on Sunday do a long trail run deep into the canyons to rack up my five-hour quota for the month. This summer, I’m planning a weeklong backcountry fly-fishing trip in Idaho’s Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness Area. Hoping I’ll return less frazzled, fitter, and feeling more alive.

Original article here

24 Jan 2024
Comments: 0

4 brilliant ways to respond to someone gaslighting you

There’s nothing more frustrating than people who try to gaslight you.

The form of emotional abuse, where someone seeks to make a person doubt their own sanity, is something experienced by many – particularly women, who, according to a 2018 policing report, account for 95% of all gaslighting victims.

Being able to respond to gaslighting can be just as tricky as identifying it – and one person highlighting the best way to respond to this form of abuse is Dr Pria.

The clinical psychologist and popular TikToker has shared four assertive responses to people who try to gaslight you in a video that has been viewed over 864,000 times.

In the clip, Dr Pria says the first assertive response people should say is, “I know what I experienced.”

Next, she says, “We remember that differently” is a good way to respond to someone who is gaslighting you, followed by “I hear you, but that’s not my experience.”

Lastly, Dr Pria says, “My emotions are not up for debate” is the fourth and final assertive response worth using to shut down gaslighters.

The video, which has been liked by over 103,000 people, saw many take to the comments to share their experiences being gaslit, while sharing the phrases they use.

One commented that her go-to response is “This conversation is over” while another wrote: “You can’t tell me how I felt”.

“The phrase I like to use is ‘We remember that differently’”, another commented. “This usually shuts them down.”

A fourth said: “I say ‘perception is everything’ doesn’t matter what he/she says their intent was. How you perceive something is always more important.”

Commenters also shared how they planned to use these responses going forward.

“Currently making flashcards so I can memorise these responses,” one said. “I freeze up and lose my train of thought every time I get gaslit by the narc.”

“Definitely going to be implementing these phrases going forward,” another wrote. “I experience this so frequently and I never know how best to respond but this has changed things for me.”

Original article here

02 Jan 2024
Comments: 0

Can 4-7-8 Breathing Really Help You Fall Asleep Faster?

Carving out time for mindfulness often feels like an indulgence, but it’s necessary. And unlike everything else on your to-do list, there are simple ways to pause and reset—like the 4-7-8 breathing technique. A controlled breathing pattern intended to help the mind and body relax, the 4-7-8 technique has helped many transition from a stressful storm into a more focused, present self.

“Breath work is an active meditation that helps reframe the nervous system’s response to trauma and triggers,” says Jasmine Marie, founder and CEO of Black Girls Breathing. “Decreasing anxiety and stress and regulating the nervous system’s response to anxiety and stress are some of the many benefits experienced by those who incorporate the practice into their daily and weekly routines.”

The benefits of deep breathing are plentiful. Research has found that slow, conscious breathing exercises, like the 4-7-8 technique, are linked to mental function, in that they can enhance emotional control and psychological well-being.

So what is 4-7-8 breathing?

The 4-7-8 breathing method, also referred to as “relaxing breath,” is based on principles of pranayama, the ancient yogic ritual of directing energy through control of the breath. While breathing techniques of this nature have been developed over centuries, the technique known as 4-7-8 breathing specifically is credited to American doctor Andrew Weil, who had a particular focus on alternative medicine. The simple technique involves breathing in for four seconds, holding the breath for seven seconds, and then breathing out for eight seconds.

“The 4-7-8 breathing method is a well-known and widely practiced technique that involves breath regulation,” explains Caroline Leaf, Ph.D., cognitive neuroscientist and host of Cleaning Up the Mental Mess podcast. “With the 4-7-8 method you are controlling the duration of your breathing, how long you hold or release your breath, as well as the frequency of your exhales and inhales, which can help calm many neurophysiological reactions in the brain and body.”

It’s in this sense that breathing exercises for anxiety are often used as a tool. Many practitioners find belly breathing and lung exercises have a relaxing, centering effect; others use deep breathing to help them fall asleep. Those who find themselves waking up with anxiety may try 4-7-8 breathing to see how it might help reframe their morning, but more on that later.

First, how to perform the 4-7-8 breathing technique

As we mentioned earlier, the exercise is straightforward: Breathe in for four, hold for seven, and then release for eight.

But there are ways to get the most out of it. Thimela Garcia, author, yoga teacher, and certified holistic practitioner, suggests finding the right time and place as a start. “I usually choose a suitable time during the day and place where to perform this breathing technique,” says Garcia. “I practice at nighttime before I go to bed as this is a very relaxing breathing technique.”

Choose whatever and whenever works best for you, though Garcia warns there are some exceptions: “4-7-8 breathing can be practiced at any time and anywhere except while driving or while executing a task that requires full attention.”

Also helpful: Get low and comfortable. The technique can be done while standing up, but experts say it helps to be as physically relaxed as possible. “I find a comfortable sitting position, whether on my bed or the floor sitting on a cushion,” says Garcia. “I like to rest my palms facing up over my knees or clasped hands over my lap. This breathing technique can be performed with the eyes either open or closed.”

You might not always be in an environment where you can close your eyes, but Garcia recommends choosing a time and place whenever possible because it helps block out any potentially distracting visual stimuli and allows one to immerse deeper into the exercise.

Once situated in the right environment, there’s one last thing someone can do to prepare. “Take a few conscious breaths and fully empty the lungs before beginning 4-7-8 breathing,” says Garcia. “Despite it being a very simple exercise, it has a very specific way to be executed.” After that, it’s time for the main event. “Inhale through the nose for a count of four, hold the breath for seven, and then exhale forcefully for a count of eight through a pursed lip, making the whooshing sound and keeping the tip of the tongue on the tissue behind the top front teeth.”

What you do afterward is totally up to you. Garcia prefers to do a few cycles of 4-7-8 breathing and then simply remain still and relaxed. “Once I finish, I breathe normally and stay there for a couple of minutes simply enjoying the stillness and total relaxation I feel after performing this breathing technique,” says Garcia. “Slowly I start opening my eyes.”

Garcia notes that people new to the technique might feel a little lightheaded at first, so it helps to remember that it takes practice and knowing one’s limits. “Please be aware that this technique should only be performed up to four times at one time and for at least one month before attempting to increase the number of cycles,” says Garcia.

And there are ways to modify the practice to fit an individual’s preference. According to Dr. Leaf, our minds are constantly in action. So when she performs the 4-7-8 breathing technique, she likes to add three words to incorporate deliberate and conscious mind-in-action thinking: “When our mind is chaotic and unruly, the 4-7-8 breathing can help calm down our neurophysiology and neurochemistry,” she explains. “Adding the words, ‘think, feel, choose’ when I do this breathing technique highlights what my mind-in-action is doing while I am processing what is going on in the moment, and it can help me intentionally start to control the chaotic thinking, feeling, and choosing that has been triggered and is causing stress.”

Does the 4-7-8 breathing method really help someone fall asleep faster?

For those who feel like they jump into bed only to spend the next two to three hours entertaining every thought that flies into their head, don’t worry: You are not alone. These types of everyday anxieties are normal. But if you’re wondering how to fall asleep fast, experts say this breathing exercise can help.

“The breath work pattern used in the 4-7-8 technique can be a great practice coupled with a bedtime routine to decrease the stressors of the day and its impact on the body and mind, which can allow for a deeper, more uninterrupted sleep,” says Marie.

Just remember, it’s all a process, so it might involve patience and regular practice before it works. “This technique should be performed twice a day to see great results and to cultivate a regular practice that can be more useful as a prevention tool,” says Garcia. “I have practiced the 4-7-8 technique when I have woken up in the middle of the night and within minutes I have felt calmer and ready to go back to sleep.”

While there are many supposed hacks to falling asleep, the bedtime benefits of deep breathing are rooted in physiology, specifically how the brain responds to increased oxygen levels. “The combination of saying ‘think, feel, choose’ and breathing deeply results in increased oxygen in the frontotemporal lobe, which can lead to increased connectivity between the amygdala and frontal lobe,” explains Dr. Leaf. “This connectivity brings a balance of energy into the left and right sides of the brain, which can help calm anxiety and help to improve the sleep cycle by facilitating the release of melatonin and making it easier to enter into a state of relaxation.”

What are other deep breathing benefits?

As we’ve mentioned, 4-7-8 breathing is often cited as a way to help reduce anxiety. According to Dr. Leaf, people are often dysregulated when they encounter stressful or triggering stimuli, and the body can often occupy one of three states: fight, freeze, or flight mode. “There are many experiences that can lead to this heightened state, including trauma, a traumatic brain injury, or any mental health stressors,” she says. “When we feel distressed, we often can’t think clearly until we calm down our brains and bodies, which is what makes deep breathing so great—it can have a very soothing effect on the mind, brain, and body, which in turn can help us get into a mental state where we can get to the root of our stressors.”

Deep breathing can also be a way to increase feel-good hormones, a.k.a. endorphins. “When we pause our breathing and hold it in, we are filling our cells with oxygen,” says Dr. Leaf. “As we force the air out, we force oxygen into our brains. This increases the amount of oxygen that flows throughout our bodies in our blood. This oxygen goes to the heart and lungs and increases the number of endorphins in the brain.”

While the method is used by many as a way to prepare mentally for a stressful event or to prevent the onset of anxiety, the experts say it can also be helpful during a panic attack. “4-7-8 breathing allows people to feel in control of their breath,” says Garcia. “This technique can be performed during an anxiety episode and hyperventilation. Long and deep exhalations trigger the vagus nerve and calm the mind and body almost immediately.”

Another benefit of this approach to mindfulness is that it is simple, subtle—and free. It can be performed while passing time in a busy airport or at a work desk in between meetings. And it doesn’t require a yoga mat or a slew of meditation apps. Plus, it’s easy to remember: 4-7-8. The simple counted approach provides structure to the exercise, so one can properly focus on their breathing.

However, this approach might not work for everyone, as all our bodies and limits are different. “I personally do not teach any techniques that are based on counting,” says Marie, “as everyone has a different lung capacity and the focus on being able to hold or expand the breath for a certain amount of time most times makes the participants be in their head more than their body and trusting their body for the duration of the practice.”

Original article here

30 Dec 2023
Comments: 0

I’ve researched time for 15 years – here’s how my perception of it has changed

Time is one of those things that most of us take for granted. We spend our lives portioning it into work-time, family-time and me-time. Rarely do we sit and think about how and why we choreograph our lives through this strange medium. A lot of people only appreciate time when they have an experience that makes them realise how limited it is.

My own interest in time grew from one of those “time is running out” experiences. Eighteen years ago, while at university, I was driving down a country lane when another vehicle strayed onto my side of the road and collided with my car. I can still vividly remember the way in which time slowed down, grinding to a near halt, in the moments before my car impacted with the oncoming vehicle. Time literally seemed to stand still. The elasticity of time and its ability to wax and wane in different situations shone out like never before. From that moment I was hooked.

I have spent the last 15 years trying to answer questions such as: Why does time slow down in near death situations? Does time really pass more quickly as you get older? How do our brains process time?

My attempts to answer these questions often involve putting people into extreme situations to explore how their experience of time is affected. Some of the participants in my experiments have been given electric shocks to induce pain, others have traversed 100-metre-high crumbling bridges (albeit in virtual reality), some have even spent 12 months in isolation on Antarctica. At the heart of this work is an attempt to understand how our interaction with our environment shapes our experience of time.

Thinking time

This research has taught me that time’s flexibility is an inherent part of the way in which we process it. We are not like clocks, which record seconds and minutes with perfect accuracy. Instead, our brain appears to be wired to perceive time in a way that is responsive to the world around us.

The way in which our brain processes time is closely related to the way in which it processes emotion. This is because some of the brain areas involved in the regulation of emotional and physiological arousal are also involved in the processing of time. During heightened emotion, the activation caused by the brain attempts to maintain stability, which alters its ability to process time.

So, when we experience fear, joy, anxiety or sadness, emotional processing and time processing interact. This results in the sensation of time passing more speeding up or slowing down. Time really does fly when you’re having fun and drag when you’re bored.

Changes in our experience of time are most profound during periods of extreme emotion. In near death experiences, like my car crash for example, time slows to the point of stopping. We don’t know why our brains distort sensory information during trauma.

Ancient adaptations

One possibility is that time distortions are an evolutionary survival intervention. Our perception of time may be fundamental to our fight and flight response. This insight into time has taught me that in times of crisis, knee jerk responses are unlikely to be the best ones. Instead, it would seem that slowing down helps me succeed.

Being a time-nerd, I spend a lot of time thinking about time. Before COVID, I would have said that I thought about it more than most. However, this changed during the pandemic.

Think back to those early lockdown days. Time started to slip and slide like never before. Hours sometimes felt like weeks and days merged into one another. Newspaper headlines and social media were awash with the idea that COVID had mangled our sense of time. They were not wrong. COVID time-warps were observed around the world. One study found that 80% of participants felt like time slowed down during the second English lockdown.

We no longer had a choice about how and when we spent our time. Home-time, work-time and me-time were suddenly rolled into one. This loss of control over our schedules made us pay attention to time. People now appear less willing to “waste time” commuting and instead place a greater value on jobs with flexibility over where and when you work. Governments and employers still appear unsure how to grapple with the ever-changing time landscape. What does seem clear however is that COVID permanently altered our relationship with time.

Unfortunately, one downside to having greater awareness of time is greater realisation of just how finite it is. This year I turned 40, my eldest child started high school and my youngest started primary school. What made these events so sobering for me was the fact that in my head, I am still only 23 years old. How can I already be halfway to 80? Is there anyway that I can slow time down?

Knowing that my actions and emotions can have a profound impact on my sense of time opens the tantalising possibility that one day I might be able to control my own experience of time. I often wonder if we may be able to harness the brain’s ability to distort time and somehow re-purpose it so that we can control how we experience it. Then, trips to the dentist could feel like seconds not minutes and holidays would no longer be over in the blink of an eye.

Even though we may be a long way from controlling time, my research has taught me just how precious time is.

Original article here

12 Dec 2023
Comments: 1

What really happens during a near-death experience

Sci-fi author Brian Herbert once wrote, “The only guarantee in life is death, and the only guarantee in death is its shocking unpredictability.” These words ring true to researchers who investigate what happens in a person’s final moments—and the frustration that comes with these studies. One big problem almost always gets in the way: How do you ask people what dying feels like when they’re no longer here?

Because we haven’t yet figured out how to communicate with the dead, the best-case scenario is talking to people who have had a close brush with death. They often mention seeing bright lights, their life flashing before their eyes, or visions of deceased loved ones. Some have even reported spotting the Grim Reaper by their bedside. It’s a paradoxical situation, says Kevin Nelson, a professor of neurology at the University of Kentucky: A few perceptions are common—a shining light, for instance—but the near-death experience is unique to each individual.

There’s still a lot of mystery when it comes to the cause, but the field is progressing thanks to people who have allowed scientists to study their brains in these situations. People who have survived these close calls say the encounter can be life-changing. One thing is certain: medical experts say near-death experiences are not a figment of the imagination.

And figuring out the mechanisms behind this phenomenon goes beyond general curiosity. One goal is to better understand how cardiac arrests happen. It could also potentially save lives, because doctors would have more knowledge for when to continue resuscitations after a patient’s heart stops.

“The research not only benefits our understanding of consciousness, but also in understanding the importance of the heart, lung, and brain in our everyday physiology,” says Jimo Borjigin, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Unreal recall

A near-death experience can happen to anyone. In fact, 1 in 10 people have reported sharper senses, slowed time, out-of-body sensations or other features associated with near-death, despite not being in grave danger. Research shows that near-death experiences come in four types: emotional, cognitive, spiritual and religious experiences, and supernatural. Of the four, people often recall supernatural activity, particularly the feeling of detaching from a physical body.

About 76 percent of people report an out-of-body experience during a near-death experience. While some people may attribute this to a spiritual experience, this is actually a sensory deception caused by the brain, which scientists have successfully replicated in people who are asleep. Research has shown that direct electrical stimulation of a brain area normally inactive in REM sleep can provoke an out-of-body experience. “Like a flip of a switch, you can literally throw somebody out of their body and back into their body,” Nelson says.

Often, though, people with cardiac arrest will recall near-death experiences. “About a quarter of people who suffer and survived cardiac arrest have memories about some aspect of near-death experience, Borjigin says. This is because people with cardiac arrest have decreasing blood pressure, she says. With the heart unable to pump properly, oxygen is unable to travel to the rest of the body, which is essential for every single cell in your body to survive. When a brain is alerted to a sudden decline in oxygen, your brain undergoes certain changes that contribute to the perceptual distortions that accompany a near-death experience.

Electrical surges in the brain

Ten years ago, Borjigin and her team observed that rats in simulated cardiac arrest still had fully active brains even 30 seconds after their hearts stopped. What’s more, their brains increased in electrical activity. To confirm whether this happens in humans, Borjigin recently tested the brains of four people who were critically ill and removed from life support.

When these comatose patients were taken off their ventilators, they could not breathe on their own. But, using EEGs, Borjigin noticed two people showed a surge in gamma brainwaves as their bodies started shutting down. Gamma brainwaves are usually a sign of consciousness, because they are mostly active when someone is awake and alert.

“We’ve shown the brain has a unique mechanism that deals with a lack of oxygen because oxygen is so essential for survival that even an acute loss massively activates the brain and could lead to a near-death experience,” Borjigin explains.

The boost in gamma waves occurred in a brain area called the temporo-parieto-occipital (TPO) junction. This is responsible for blending information from our senses, including touch, motion, and vision, into our conscious selves. It’s impossible to know if the increased brain activity was related to any visions they may have had, because, sadly, the two patients died. But Borjigin suggests activation of this area suggests people may likely pick up sounds and understand language. “They might hear and perceive the conversation around them and form a visual image in their brain even when their eyes are closed.”

Hidden consciousness

In one of the largest studies of near-death experiences, an international team of doctors has linked the surge in brain activity to what they called a hidden consciousness immediately following death. In the study, people who were brought back to life through CPR after cardiac arrest could recall memories and conversations while they were seemingly unconscious.

Between May 2017 and March 2020, the team tracked 567 people who underwent a cardiac arrest. They used EEGs and cerebral oxygenation monitoring to measure electrical activity and brain oxygen levels during CPR. To study auditory and visual awareness, the team used a tablet showing one of 10 images on the screen, and five minutes after, it would play a recording of fruit names: pear, banana, and apple, for another five minutes.

Only 53 people of the original 567 participants were successfully resuscitated. Initially, they showed no signs of brain activity and were considered dead. But during the CPR, the team noticed bursts of activity. These spikes included gamma waves and others: delta, theta, alpha, and beta waves—all electrical activity that signals consciousness.

Twenty-eight of those 53 patients were cognitively capable of having an interview. Eleven people recalled being lucid during CPR, being aware of what was happening or showing perceptions of consciousness like an out-of-body experience. No one could recall the visual image but when asked to randomly name three fruit, one person correctly named all the fruits in the audio recording—though the authors note this could have been a random lucky guess.

The study authors also included self-reports of 126 other survivors of cardiac arrests not involved in the study and what they remembered from almost dying. Common themes included the pain and pressure of chest compressions, hearing conversations from doctors, out-of-body experiences, and abstract dreams that had nothing to do with the medical event.

The findings debunk the idea that an oxygen-deprived brain stays alive for only five to ten minutes. They also raise the question whether doctors can save people already determined to be dead. “These patients were actually alive within, as seen in the positive waves on the EEG, but externally they were dead,” says Chinwe Ogedegbe, an emergency trauma center section chief and coauthor of the study.

Beyond the brain’s resilience to the lack of oxygen, the authors propose an alternative “braking system” that could explain the distorted perceptions of consciousness. The brain normally filters and inhibits unneeded information when you’re awake. In this unconscious state, however, the braking system is gone, which could allow dormant brain pathways to activate and access a deeper realm of consciousness containing all of your memory, thoughts, and actions. “Instead of being hallucinatory, illusory or delusional, this appears to facilitate lucid understanding of new dimensions of reality,” the authors write in their paper.

Unfortunately, with only a small number of participants surviving their cardiac arrest, it’s unclear whether this altered consciousness is more visual or auditory. Ogedegbe is working to increase the number of participants in the next trial to 1,500. Doing so will give researchers a better idea of the type of brain activity that goes on when someone is at death’s door, and potentially provide comfort that their loved ones can sense them in their final moments.

Original article here

20 Nov 2023
Comments: 0

100 Ways to Slightly Improve Your Life Without Really Trying

1 Exercise on a Monday night (nothing fun happens on a Monday night).

2 On the fence about a purchase? Wait 72 hours before you buy it.

3 Tip: the quickest supermarket queue is always behind the fullest trolley (greeting, paying and packing take longer than you think).

4 Bring fruit to work. Bring fruit to bed!

5 Consider going down to four days a week. It’s likely a disproportionate amount of your fifth day’s work is taxed anyway, so you’ll lose way less than a fifth of your take-home pay.

6 Everyone has an emotional blind spot when they fight. Work out what yours is, and remember it.

7 Plant spring bulbs, even if they’re just in a pot.

8 Send a voice note instead of a text; they sound like personal mini podcasts.

9 Keep a bird feeder by a window, ideally the kitchen. It’ll pass the time when you’re washing up.

10 Always bring ice to house parties (there’s never enough).

11 Get the lighting right: turn off the overhead one, turn on lots of lamps (but turn off when you leave the room).

12 Sharpen your knives.

13 Feeling sluggish at work? Try the Pomodoro technique: 25 minutes on, five-minute break, and repeat.

14 Buy a cheap blender and use it to finely chop onions (it saves on time and tears).

15 Keep your children’s drawings and paintings. Put the best ones in frames.

16 Set aside 10 minutes a day to do something you really enjoy – be it reading a book or playing Halo.

17 Don’t be weird about how to stack the dishwasher.

18 Reuse all plastic bags – even bread bags. Much of the packaging you can’t reuse can be taken to larger branches of supermarkets for recycling.

19 Take a photo of the tag you are given when leaving your coat in a cloakroom.

20 Can’t sleep? Try a relaxing soak with lavender bath oil before bed.

21 Add the milk at least one minute after the tea has brewed.

22 Laugh shamelessly at your own jokes.

23 It might sound obvious, but a pint of water before bed after a big night avoids a clanger of a hanger.

24 Start a Saturday morning with some classical music – it sets the tone for a calm weekend.

25 Look closely.

26 Set time limits for your apps. Just go to the settings on your smartphone and add a limit – for example, if you have an iPhone turn on Screen Time.

27 If possible, take the stairs.

28 Always be willing to miss the next train.

29 Eat meat once a week, max. Ideally less.

30 Be polite to rude strangers – it’s oddly thrilling.

31 Ask questions, and listen to the answers.

32 Connect with nature: stand outside barefoot for a few minutes – even when it’s cold.

33 Join your local library – and use it.

34 Go for a walk without your phone.

35 Eat salted butter (life’s too short for unsalted).

36 Stretch in the morning. And maybe in the evening.

37 If you’re going less than a mile, walk or cycle. About half of car journeys are under two miles, yet these create more pollution than longer journeys as the engine isn’t warmed up yet.

38 Sleep with your phone in a different room (and buy an alarm clock).

39 Send postcards from your holidays. Send them even if you’re not on holiday.

40 Instead of buying new shoes, get old ones resoled and buy new laces.

41 Buy a plant. Think you’ll kill it? Buy a fake one.

42 Don’t have Twitter on your phone.

43 If you find an item of clothing you love and are certain you will wear for ever, buy three.

44 Try taking a cold shower (30 seconds to two minutes) before your hot one. It’s good for your health – both physical and mental.

45 Text to say thank you.

46 Read a poem every day. Keep a compendium, such as A Poem for Every Day of the Year, by your bed.

47 Take out your headphones when walking – listen to the world.

48 Buy secondhand.

49 Buy in person!

50 Learn how to floss properly.

51 If something in the world is making you angry, write (politely) to your MP – they will read it.

52 Say hello to your neighbours.

53 Learn the basics of repairing your clothes.

54 Always bring something – wine, flowers – to a dinner/birthday party, even if they say not to.

55 Learn the names of 10 trees.

56 Call an old friend out of the blue.

57 Every so often, search your email for the word “unsubscribe” and then use it on as many as you can.

58 Buy a newspaper. (Ideally this one.)

59 Always have dessert.

60 Drop your shoulders.

61 Make something from scratch. Works best if it’s something you’d normally buy, such as a dress or a bag.

62 Go to bed earlier – but don’t take your phone with you.

63 Volunteer. Go to gov.uk/government/get-involved for ideas.

64 Dry your cutlery with a cloth (it keeps it shiny).

65 Instead of buying a morning coffee, set up a daily transfer of £2 from a current into a savings account and forget about it. Use it to treat yourself to something different later.

66 Don’t save things for “best”. Wear them – enjoy them.

67 Sing!

68 Think about your posture: don’t slouch, and don’t cross your legs.

69 Hang your clothes up. Ideally on non-wire hangers (it’s better for them).

70 Skinny-dip with friends.

71 Switch your phone off on holiday (or at least delete your work email app).

72 Always use freshly ground pepper.

73 Thank a teacher who changed your life.

74 Respect your youngers.

75 Keep your keys in the same place.

76 Ditch the plastic cartons and buy milk in glass bottles.

77 Rent rather than buy a suit/dress for that forthcoming wedding (even if it’s your own).

78 Always book an extra day off after a holiday.

79 Ignore the algorithm – listen to music outside your usual taste.

80 Mute or leave a WhatsApp group chat.

81 Learn a TikTok dance (but don’t post it on TikTok).

82 Cook something you’ve never attempted before.

83 Join a local litter-picking group.

84 Handwash that thing you’ve never cleaned.

85 Don’t get a pet/do get a pet.

86 Nap.

87 Learn how to breathe deeply: in through the nose, out through the mouth, making the exhale longer than the inhale.

88 Buy a bike and use it. Learn how to fix it, too.

89 Politely decline invitations if you don’t want to go.

90 If you do go, have an exit strategy (can we recommend a French exit, where you slip out unseen).

91 If in doubt, add cheese.

92 Don’t look at your phone at dinner.

93 Do that one thing you’ve been putting off.

94 Give compliments widely and freely.

95 Set up an affordable standing order to a charity.

96 Keep a book in your bag to avoid the temptation to doomscroll.

97 Listen to the albums you loved as a teenager.

98 Make a friend from a different generation.

99 Staying over at a friend’s place? Strip the bed in the morning.

100 For instant cheer, wear yellow.

Original article here

16 Nov 2023
Comments: 0

Signs You’re Moving Into a High-Vibe Version of Reality

You feel calm inside … and that calmness offers an ease of genius flow and vitality.
You have emotive bursts popping up from inside.
Sometimes they’re purposeful and other times you might cry over nothing at all. I believe this is your power offering itself to you to elevate the world.
You fall in love with nature, animals, people, the Earth.
You see wonders everywhere you look. And you want to put more of that wonderfulness into the world around you for others to thrive upon.
It becomes effortless to energetically zing others up. The more you do this, the greater you feel.
You see the potential in people and situations and aim straight for the new possibilities on offer in every circumstance.
You feel younger than your years and look in the mirror to find that’s showing up in you physically too.
You love easily with zero concern for a broken heart because this kind of love comes from a greater place with greater purpose and offers itself readily to all.
You understand things at greater levels, eliminating the reactive responses that come along with a lack of comprehension of greater purpose at play.
You feel more like the greater being you really are, finding ways to live this here on Earth.
You discover you can talk to animals, trees, oceans, the universe, etc. and they energetically talk back to you with brilliant insights into how life is unfolding right now. We are increasingly interconnected as Source beings in a symbiotic version of reality.
You become an alchemical elevancer of Life naturally and instinctively.

May grace, genius and greatness flow through us all now with wonder and joy.

About the Author: