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Science of the SpiritS
© Mike SundaAbattoir workers at the Shibaura meat market
In the corner of a pristine room tucked away in Tokyo's Shibaura meat market is a table topped with a stack of crudely composed hate mail - evidence of a prejudice that dates back to medieval times.
Slaughtermen, undertakers, those working with leather and in other "unclean" professions such as sanitation have long been marginalised in Japan. That prejudice continues to this day and especially for those working in the Shibaura abattoir.
© igor / FotoliaTo investigate the brain's unconscious emotion regulation processes, the researchers recorded the participants' neural activity as they listened to clips of happy, sad and fearful-sounding music using functional magnetic resonance imaging.
Emotion regulation is an essential component to mental health. Poor emotion regulation is associated with psychiatric mood disorders such as depression. Clinical music therapists know the power music can have over emotions, and are able to use music to help their clients to better mood states and even to help relieve symptoms of psychiatric mood disorders like depression. But many people also listen to music on their own as a means of emotion regulation, and not much is known about how this kind of music listening affects mental health.
Researchers at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Music Research at the University of Jyväskylä, Aalto University in Finland and Aarhus University in Denmark decided to investigate the relationship between mental health, music listening habits and neural responses to music emotions by looking at a combination of behavioural and neuroimaging data. The study was published in August in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
We've all had the experience of wanting to get a project done but putting it off for later. Sometimes we wait because we just don't care enough about the project, but other times we care a lot - and still end up doing something else. I, for one, end up cleaning my house when I have a lot of papers to grade, even though I know I need to grade them.
So why do we procrastinate? Are we built to operate this way at some times? Or is there something wrong with the way we're approaching work?
These questions are central to my research on goal pursuit, which could offer some clues from neuroscience about why we procrastinate - and how to overcome this tendency.
Sometimes we can choose not to get upset by a situation that normally would have upset us. To succeed, we must think through the situation, recognize that we have a choice, consider the consequences of our response, and then be deliberate about our reaction.
Several years ago, I had an interesting experience that illustrates the ability to choose. I was flying from Charlotte to Bangkok, Thailand to participate in a counseling clinic for American missionaries serving in China. My flight went from Charlotte to Minneapolis to Tokyo and finally to Bangkok.
After a layover in Minneapolis, I boarded a plane for the 13-hour trip to Tokyo. The plane filled with passengers and the attendant closed the cabin door. I got out a book to pass the time.
With the plane still at the gate, the pilot came over the intercom, saying, "I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but we have a little problem with the plane. One of the computers isn't working and we have called in technicians, so we should be under way in about 20 minutes." I didn't think this would be a problem because I had a four-hour layover in Tokyo.
© ShutterstockWhat makes some people suppress their worst fears and do the right thing?
Though Fleming later engages in battle and proves his courage, he wonders why he fled in the first place. From writers to philosophers to heroes themselves, people for generations have pondered the question: what makes people act bravely? Thanks to recent research into fear regulation in the brain, neuroscientists are starting to answer such questions, revealing how people think about the interplay between individual and societal benefits. Understanding the intricacies of the fear response could someday lead researchers to new treatments for mental illnesses like PTSD, but for now, they have more questions than answers.
© scienceandnonduality.com
You were told that healing from past pains would get you happiness. But if you're reading this, you probably have been on the "healing path" for a long time, under the assumption that once you heal your past, you'd finally find fulfillment and freedom. That was how I looked at my life, for a long time. I went from one healing modality to another, on a quest for the Holy Grail that would bestow bliss to eternity.
Such a quest is useful, until it is not. After years of professional counseling, shamanic sessions, cleansing retreats, and chocolate cake fixes, I realized that the healing journey simply would not end on its own. If you look for them, you can always find traumas in yourself, old and new, to be healed and cleansed. A completely healed human is a mythological construct. And the quest for healing can be a rat race that is easy to get on, but hard to step off.
You could never be fully healed because healing is a concept that only exists in a world of duality where experiences are dichotomized into good and bad, right and wrong, happy and sad. Light cannot be known without darkness. Similarly, you won't be able to define healing in yourself without also identifying trauma in yourself. As long as you live in a narrative of personal history, of how you came to be the way you are and how you're being fixed and improved from a state of brokenness, the story of your healing journey will continue just like time extends to infinity.
"Don't you dare raise your voice in this house," says just about every parent in the modern world. Although anger directed at another human being can be hurtful and detrimental to our health, outward expressions of anger fueled to exercise or simply ease distress may help protect us from heart disease and stroke. Men with moderate levels of anger expression are less likely to have a stroke than those who rarely expressed anger.
Yet from the first encounter, the theories unraveled in the face of situations that could never have been predicted. The most respected generals in the world were made to look like amateurs. Their faith in abstract planning blinded them to the reality of the situation. It took years of conflict before they began to really adapt to the reality of their situation.
These generals didn't realize that they were engaging in the world's first truly modern battles. These battles required the ability to improvise more than they required detailed plans.
The same transition is currently happening in business. A plethora of business books came out this summer building on the concept of The Lean Startup methodology introduced by Eric Ries. That is, it is cheaper in most cases to run an experiment than to create a plan. Even massive companies are starting to turn their focus towards quickly implementing a strategy on a small scale to test a concept before rolling out a massive change.
Comment: Prepping, as an example, entails great uncertainty. Though not mentioned specifically, the suggestions could prove useful.
© Thinkstock
It's also just plain fun.
So what makes coloring such an effective form of art therapy?
"The action involves both logic, by which we color forms, and creativity, when mixing and matching colors. This incorporates the areas of the cerebral cortex involved in vision and fine motor skills (coordination necessary to make small, precise movements)," psychologist Gloria Martinez Ayala told the Huffington Post. "The relaxation that it provides lowers the activity of the amygdala, a basic part of our brain involved in controlling emotion that is affected by stress."
Put another way: When we focus on coloring, it blocks our brains from focusing on our troubles.
"Because it's a centering activity, the amygdala, which is the part of the brain that is involved with our fear response, actually gets a bit, a little bit of a rest," psychologist Dr. Ben Michaelis told Fox News. "It ultimately has a really calming effect over time."
Comment: Let the kids learn through play