Category: Wellness Wednesday

Living through a period in which there is so much that divides it is sometimes helpful to also attend to what we have in common, and what keeps us going. To that end, the New York Times’ Well Desk recently surveyed their readers and asked what their wellness “non-negotiables” are. Thousands of people shared practices that anchor and animate their days. You can read a few examples below or the full article at nytimes.com. But today perhaps ask yourself, what are your wellness non-negotiables? And can you share that with someone else? These might be ways to stay grounded, become healthier, or just a little bit happier.

“I use different plates for breakfast on the weekends. Rather than the grab-and-go-shovel-in-the-food weekday morning routine, my bright blue and yellow plates with bread, jams and fruit are a reminder to enjoy life, slow down and savor.”

“Every morning I walk around our town for what I call my Banana Walk. My wife dislikes the smell of bananas in the house, and I love her, so I take my banana and spend the next hour figuring out the universe, life, and while I’m at it, my work day.”

“Every morning — all year — my husband and I do a “bird sit,” a 20- to 60-minute phone-free time when we watch the birds from our patio. The first time I did this practice was at a weekend workshop; it was the first time in over 10 years that I’d been by myself, sitting quietly without my children and without my phone. I thought I was going to burst it felt so long. Now, the practice is just as important to my day as eating breakfast and getting to work. Our 7-year-old often joins us. In the winter, we get bundled in sleeping bags. We have a family of sharp shinned hawks we’ve been watching, and hummingbirds come so close we can hold them in our hands.”

“I used to read all the time when I was younger and wanted to get back into it. For the last few months, it’s become a non-negotiable for me to read for at least half an hour a day. It usually ends up being more than that, but on days when I’m exhausted or busy with other things, I cut it off at my mandatory 30 minutes. Since I started reading every day, I’ve become more productive overall. I feel like my imagination has improved since I’m watching less TV and spending less time scrolling on my phone. My mind is moving more, and I feel more present in my life.”

“Having tea with my 11-year-old son after school. He likes iced mint tea with some honey; I go for English Breakfast with a splash of soy milk. It’s our time to connect, joke around and chat about the day. It doesn’t have to last long — maybe 15 to 20 minutes. I cherish this mom-son teatime and look forward to it every school day!”

“At least once a day, I choose to savor a moment of joy. The occasion might be a taste of delicious food, a laugh with a loved one, finding a prize parking spot, discovering my next library book, catching a glimpse of the moon through my upstairs window. It’s amazing how these wonders multiply when I come to see them as ubiquitous gifts, not rare anomalies.”

Lesley Alderman is a Brooklyn-based psychotherapist who recently wrote a piece for the Washington Post describing what she feels is an unusually high degree of weariness in the people coming to her for therapy. She feels she has noticed a trend wherein those who had been concerned about national and world events and visibly frightened during the pandemic now seem exhausted. Related, she feels many are experiencing a deficit of optimism, and are overwhelmed about important issues that are beyond their control. Ms. Alderman has labeled this “hope fatigue” and feels it is, in least in part, due to the fact that humans were just not designed for this level of chronic threat to every aspect of our lives. To counter this, she offers the following practical advice to counter this problem. We encourage you to pick just one of these interventions to start, try implementing it over the next two weeks before trying another.

Take a break from the news. A total creak at first may be good, but when you come back, try reading the news just once a day, turn off alerts on your phone and, if possible, check social media sparingly.	Take care of yourself. Get back to basics: work toward sleeping and eating well, and getting exercise where you can. Otherwise, find ways to engage in life-affirming activities.
Focus on the present. Get in the habit of anchoring yourself in the here and now. Fretting about the future is not helpful.	Try a breathing exercise. Taking a few deep breaths — for instance, inhaling to the count of five and exhaling to the count of five — will help calm your sympathetic nervous system (the fight or flight response) and lower your anxiety.
Think about your victories. Remind yourself of what’s working well in your own life — whether it’s your job, friendships, or the uplifting array of houseplants you nurtured during the pandemic.	Be your own therapist. Ask yourself, what do I specifically feel hopeless about and why? Being able to put into words what’s getting you down can help you feel less flooded by emotions and better able to process the information rationally.
Take action. Worrying doesn’t help one’s mental health, but taking action does. Look around your community. Maybe your local playground would benefit from a basketball court, or your church or synagogue could sponsor a refugee family. When people engage in local issues, they have a renewed sense of optimism.	Join forces with a friend. Pick a cause. There are hundreds of nonprofits dedicated to addressing some of the most tenacious challenges on the planet. Donate money to an inspiring organization or volunteer.

What would it look like if we flipped the script on happiness? Rather than viewing it as the logical outcome of good things, could we look at happiness as the cause of good things? It is these questions and more that Dr. Ed Diener attempts to answer in his lecture “The New Science of Happiness.” Dr. Diener was a psychologist, professor, and author at the University of Utah and the University of Virginia as well as a senior scientist for the Gallup Organization. He is noted for his research over the past thirty years on happiness, including work on temperament and personality influences on well-being, theories of well-being, income and well-being, cultural influences on well-being, and the measurement of well-being. His body of work ha been cited over 257,000 times and remains impactful to this day. Check out his lecture below!

The following is summarized from the NPR article “How to have real fun — even when life’s got you down” which can be read in full at https://www.npr.org/2022/02/22/1082374139/how-to-have-fun-and-why-you-should

Catherine Price, author of “The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again,” defines fun as a time when you are able to embody a mix of three things: playfulness, connection and flow.

Playfulness – “I don’t mean you have to play a game. You don’t have to play make-believe, you have to do charades,” says Price. Playfulness is when you embrace a spirit of lightheartedness and freedom. It means letting go of the idea that you have to be perfect or to achieve something.

Connection – You feel a sense of connection with the activity that you’re doing. You feel a sense of connection with your physical body. Or, most likely, you feel a sense of connection with another person or group of people through a shared experience.

Flow – You know that thing where you’re totally immersed in something and can even lose track of time? That.

Price also offers a handy acronym to help bring more fun in your days: SPARK

S — make Space for fun! Put your phone down, or even set aside some time on your calendar to make sure you are really dedicating yourself to looking for fun.

P — Pursue passions. “You don’t need to put pressure on yourself and think ‘I’m going to become a professional snowboarder,'” Price says. Set the bar low! Look for things that interest you and let those guide you.

A — A is for attracting fun, which means having an open mind about when and where fun might appear. Price recommends an improv-style “yes, and” approach to having fun, where you look for fun as well as jump into other folks’ fun.

R — Rebellion! Price found in her research that a little bit of gentle rebellion was a good way to make fun happen. So, jump in a pool with your clothes on! Go roller skating in the middle of the night! Stepping out of what is expected of you can be a great way to seek out fun moments.

K — Keep at it! Like any new practice, the only way to really incorporate it into your life is to try it many times. So don’t give up if basket weaving doesn’t work for you — maybe it’ll be guitar or making zines or working in the community garden that becomes your next fun magnet!

Dani Blum is an associate writer for Well at The New York Times. the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Philadelphia magazine. She recently penned an article meant to help people distinguish between burn-out, depression, and what do to about each. You can read the full article “How Can I Tell if I’m Depressed or Burned Out?” at NYTimes.com.

Dani writes “Workers can become burned out when they feel like they don’t have control over their day-to-day lives, getting bogged down in the minutiae of their tasks. People who are burned out may feel depleted and cynical about their jobs; they can resent their assignments and co-workers. They might feel irritable and ineffective, like they just can’t get anything done. For people who interact with others in their jobs, like health care workers or people in the retail and service industries, they might start to lose empathy, thinking of patients or customers as just another number, or a rote task to complete. There are also a litany of physical symptoms that can come with the unending stress of burnout: insomnia, headaches, gastrointestinal issues.”

She goes on to write “The World Health Organization includes burnout in the International Classification of Diseases, its diagnostic manual, characterizing it as an “occupational phenomenon,” not a medical condition. Depression, however, is a clinical diagnosis. People with depression often experience anhedonia, the inability to enjoy activities they once treasured. “You can be reading a book you used to love and now you hate it,” said Dr. Jessi Gold, a psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis. “Or you love watching Bravo, but now it doesn’t make you laugh anymore.” With burnout, you might not have energy for your hobbies; with depression, you might not find them fun or pleasant at all, said Jeanette M. Bennett, an associate professor who studies the effects of stress on health at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.”

A key differentiator is that burnout gets better when you step away from work, said Dr. Rebecca Brendel, president of the American Psychiatric Association. When you take vacation time, or a mental health day, you feel at least slightly recharged. Depression doesn’t go away if you change your circumstances. “There’s not that bounce-back effect,” she said. “It takes more than that.”

The authors recommend the following for burnout:

• Take a mental health day or a “sad day” off work, if you’re able to, can offer a reprieve from your symptoms.
• Consider a career change — which is easier said than done, Dr. Gold acknowledged. “Being able to say, ‘This is a bad workplace, that’s it, I quit,’ is a privilege beyond privilege,” she said.
• Turn off notifications from your work email or Slack at certain hours.
• If there’s one meeting you consistently dread, try to block off five or 10 minutes right after to do something that can help you relax,
• Accentuate the elements of your job that you find meaningful. Maybe that means mentoring a more junior colleague.
• Exercise can help relieve work-related tension, as can carving out even a few minutes to decompress — without your phone.

But depression is a different story and they recommend:

• Reach out to a mental health provider
• If you tell yourself you’re going on a five-minute walk, you’ll probably end up walking for longer than that, Dr. Gold said. “But it’s hard when you’re exhausted and sad to make yourself do anything.”
• Getting out of the house won’t alleviate all your symptoms, but any kind of movement can help you feel a bit better, she said.
• You can write down coping mechanisms that have been helpful for you — calling a friend, or going for a quick run — and keep the list on your desk or on your dresser for when you’ll need them.
• Pay attention to what works for you, Dr. Gold said. “If you don’t like mindfulness, don’t force it,” she said. “Do the things that actually help you feel better in the moments when you feel bad.”

Be sure to read the full article “How Can I Tell if I’m Depressed or Burned Out?” at NYTimes.com.

Recently, researchers Héctor García and Francesc Miralles have expanded their study of the Japanese concept of Ikigai, the rough translation of which is “the happiness of always being busy.” García and Miralles suggest every person has an Ikigai, and that it can be found through patient soul-searching. This generally involves finding balance between your passion, mission, profession, and vocation is the key. While the answer to your Ikigai may take time to uncover, here are 10 general rules to start you on your way:

1. Stay active and don’t retire. Once García and Miralles arrived in Okinawa, they were shocked to find out how many people simply do not retire — in fact, they even note the lack of a Japanese word for the concept. In order to do what you love for as long as you can, the authors suggest that you make it a priority to stay active in all stages of life.
2. Take it slow. “When you leave urgency behind, life and time take on new meaning,” the authors advise. So instead of rushing your daily tasks, try to savor and enjoy them for the sake of your Ikigai. ikigai book cover
3. Don’t fill your stomach. “Less is more when it comes to a long life. Eat a little less than your hunger demands.” According to García and Miralles, one of the most popular phrases in Japan is “Hara hachi bu,” which means something akin to “fill your belly to 80 percent.”
4. Surround yourself with good friends. “Friends are the best medicine, there for confiding, sharing stories, getting advice, having fun, dreaming… in other words, living.” Basically, it’s a great excuse to gather your girl squad for drinks more often. Hey, it’s for your health!
5. Get in shape for your next birthday. “The body you move through life needs a bit of gentle daily maintenance.” While the folks on the Japanese island of Okinawa do not perform rigorous exercise, they do regularly get up and move their muscles. Try setting an alarm on your phone every hour to remind yourself to get out of your office chair and move around.
6. Smile. “It’s a privilege to be in the here and now — and in a world so full of possibilities,” say García and Miralles. Do your best to stay positive no matter what life throws your way, lady.
7. Reconnect with nature. “Human beings are made to be part of the natural world. Return to it as often as you can,” the authors say. In other words, do your best to make time in your busy schedule to get back to nature, whether that’s a weekend hike with friends or a summer goal to bike to work once a week.
8. Give thanks. “Give thanks for everything that brightens your day and makes you feel lucky to be alive.” Whether it’s committing to writing in a gratitude journalor simply being more conscious of voicing your gratefulness to the Starbucks barista who saves your morning, do your best to give more thanks throughout the day. ADVERTISING
9. Live in the moment. We all have those moments where looking ahead at our busy schedule leaves us feeling mega overwhelmed and stressed. “Today is all we have,” the authors note. “Make it worth remembering.”
10. Find your Ikigai. “There is a passion inside you, a unique talent, that gives meaning to your days and drives you to share the best of yourself until the very end.” You heard it — go get ’em, lady!

A new paper suggests that it takes far less exercise than was previously thought to lower blood sugar after eating. While previous research focused on a 15-minute walking goal, a new meta-analysis from University of Limerick found that light walking after a meal, in increments of as little as two to five minutes, had a significant impact in moderating blood sugar levels. When participants went for a short walk, their blood sugar levels rose and fell more gradually which is a key goal in diabetes management. In a recent interview with the New York times Dr. Kershaw Patel, having review the research, said “Each small thing you do will have benefits, even if it is a small step.” Further proof that our journey through wellness does not need to be marked by successive big achievements, the small ones add up and set us up for success!

You can read the full study at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-022-01649-4