Story Editing for Improved Mental and Emotional Health

“Tim Wilson of the University of Virginia has been studying how small changes in a person’s own stories and memories can help with emotional health. He calls the process “story editing.” And he says small tweaks in the interpretation of life events can reap huge benefits.

This process is essentially what happens during months, or years, of therapy. But Wilson has discovered ways you can change your story in only about 45 minutes.

Wilson first stumbled on the technique back in the early 1980s, when he found that a revised story helped college students who were struggling academically. “I’m bad at school” was the old story many of them were telling themselves. “That story leads to a self-defeating cycle that keeps them struggling,” Wilson says.

The new story Wilson gave them was: “Everyone fails at first.” He introduced the students to this idea by having them read accounts from other students who had struggled with grades at first and then improved. It was a 40-minute intervention that had effects three years later.

“The ones who got our little story-editing nudge improved their grades, whereas the others didn’t,” Wilson says. “And to our surprise … those who got our story-editing intervention were more likely to stay in college. The people in the control group were more likely to drop out.”

Similar interventions have also helped students feel like they fit in socially at college and have helped parents to stop abusing their kids.

The idea is that if you believe you are something else — perhaps smarter, more socially at ease — you can allow for profound changes to occur.

You can even try story-editing yourself at home with these writing exercises. Simply pick a troubling event. And write about it for 15 minutes each day for four days. That’s it.

These exercises have been shown to help relieve mental anguish, improve health and increase attendance at work.

No one is sure why the approach works. But Wilson’s theory is that trying to understand why a painful event happened is mentally consuming. People get stuck in thinking, “Why did he leave me?” or “Why was she so disappointed in me?” Or for Lewis, “Where did that scary Frankenstein face come from?”

As you write about the troubling, confusing event again and again, eventually you begin to make sense of it. You can put those consuming thoughts to rest.”

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Essentially, you are re-framing events that cause you to feel negative emotions. The exercises are fantastic because they allow you to release the pent up negative energy you have about the past event.

Nothing has meaning except the meaning you give it, so having the ability to re-frame events in your life is a very empowering skill that will allow you to flow through things you don’t want, release unsupportive thoughts and emotions, and attract the things you do want faster.

Source:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/01/01/258674011/editing-your-lifes-stories-can-create-happier-endings

How Stories May Change the Brain

Many people can recall reading at least one cherished story that they say changed their life. Now researchers at Emory University have detected what may be biological traces related to this feeling: Actual changes in the brain that linger, at least for a few days, after reading a novel.

Their findings, that reading a novel may cause changes in resting-state connectivity of the brain that persist, were published by the journal Brain Connectivity.

“Stories shape our lives and in some cases help define a person,” says neuroscientist Gregory Berns, lead author of the study and the director of Emory’s Center for Neuropolicy. “We want to understand how stories get into your brain, and what they do to it.”

His co-authors included Kristina Blaine and Brandon Pye from the Center for Neuropolicy, and Michael Prietula, professor of information systems and operations management at Emory’s Goizueta Business School.

Neurobiological research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has begun to identify brain networks associated with reading stories. Most previous studies have focused on the cognitive processes involved in short stories, while subjects are actually reading them as they are in the fMRI scanner.

The Emory study focused on the lingering neural effects of reading a narrative. Twenty-one Emory undergraduates participated in the experiment, which was conducted over 19 consecutive days.

All of the study subjects read the same novel, “Pompeii,” a 2003 thriller by Robert Harris that is based on the real-life eruption of Mount Vesuvius in ancient Italy. “The story follows a protagonist, who is outside the city of Pompeii and notices steam and strange things happening around the volcano,” Berns says. “He tries to get back to Pompeii in time to save the woman he loves. Meanwhile, the volcano continues to bubble and nobody in the city recognizes the signs.”

The researchers chose the book due to its page-turning plot. “It depicts true events in a fictional and dramatic way,” Berns says. “It was important to us that the book had a strong narrative line.”

For the first five days, the participants came in each morning for a base-line fMRI scan of their brains in a resting state. Then they were given nine sections of the novel, about 30 pages each, over a nine-day period. They were asked to read the assigned section in the evening, and come in the following morning. After taking a quiz to ensure they had finished the assigned reading, the participants underwent an fMRI scan of their brain in a non-reading, resting state. After completing all nine sections of the novel, the participants returned for five more mornings to undergo additional scans in a resting state.

The results showed heightened connectivity in the left temporal cortex, an area of the brain associated with receptivity for language, on the mornings following the reading assignments. “Even though the participants were not actually reading the novel while they were in the scanner, they retained this heightened connectivity,” Berns says. “We call that a ‘shadow activity,’ almost like a muscle memory.”

Heightened connectivity was also seen in the central sulcus of the brain, the primary sensory motor region of the brain. Neurons of this region have been associated with making representations of sensation for the body, a phenomenon known as grounded cognition. Just thinking about running, for instance, can activate the neurons associated with the physical act of running.

“The neural changes that we found associated with physical sensation and movement systems suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist,” Berns says. “We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else’s shoes in a figurative sense. Now we’re seeing that something may also be happening biologically.”

The neural changes were not just immediate reactions, Berns says, since they persisted the morning after the readings, and for the five days after the participants completed the novel.

“It remains an open question how long these neural changes might last,” Berns says. “But the fact that we’re detecting them over a few days for a randomly assigned novel suggests that your favorite novels could certainly have a bigger and longer-lasting effect on the biology of your brain.”

-Source: eScienceCommons

How Long to Power Nap

A study published in PubMed in 2002 found that napping even for 5-10 minutes creates a heightened sense of alertness and increased cognitive ability in comparison to no nap.  So really, you want to be taking a 10-20 minute nap for a quick recharge, or a 60-90 minute nap for a deep sleep rejuvenation.

In addition to those recommendations, one surprising suggestion is to sit slightly upright during your nap, because it will help you avoid a deep sleep. And if you find yourself dreaming during your power naps, it may be a sign you’re sleep deprived.

– See more at: http://www.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/how-long-to-nap-for-the-biggest-brain-benefits/#sthash.h64Y7LpV.dpuf

Free Online College Courses

I just found out about Academic Earth, an awesome website that gives access to free online college courses from the world’s top universities.

Check it out!

http://academicearth.org/

Also, there are links to other sites with fascinating and free information here.

Scientists Reveal the Secret of Creative Genius

Dutch researchers studied the biographies of famous artists and found an interesting pattern.

The scientists studied the works and career of almost all well-known artists and made a detailed statistical analysis.

The results were stunning: it turns out that the best artwork of almost every one of them was created at a time when his age was about 2/3 of all life, or rather 0,6198. This proportion is completely independent of the age of genius, whether he died in the age of 25 or 90 years old.

The found number is remarkably similar to the so-called “golden ratio”, also known as the Fibonacci ratio: 0.6180, which can often be found in both nature and the cosmos, as well as in music, photography and visual arts.

In their study, the scientists focused primarily on the prices of works exhibited at international auctions, since their relative monetary value usually matches their artistic value. The average age of the artists, in which they created their most brilliant paintings, was equal to 42.

For example, Picasso, who lived 91 years, created, his famous Guernica, a masterpiece depicting the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, at the age of 56.

Monet died at age 86, and his best paintings, which went under the hammer for 19.8 million pounds in 1998, were created when he was 68 years old.

“The average age of the artists is not so important,” says Philip Hans Frances, a math professor from the School of Economics of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. “Much more important is the relative age when they had a peak of creativity.”

It is known that compositions built on the rule of “golden ratio” are the most pleasant for the human perception. Thus, the very life of a gifted artist is actually a perfect work of art.

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Sources:

Learning-Mind.com

Photo – JenCropable.com

Study Suggests DNA Expression Changes with Meditation

“With evidence growing that meditation can have beneficial health effects, scientists have sought to understand how these practices physically affect the body.

A new study by researchers in Wisconsin, Spain, and France reports the first evidence of specific molecular changes in the body following a period of mindfulness meditation.

The study investigated the effects of a day of intensive mindfulness practice in a group of experienced meditators, compared to a group of untrained control subjects who engaged in quiet non-meditative activities. After eight hours of mindfulness practice, the meditators showed a range of genetic and molecular differences, including altered levels of gene-regulating machinery and reduced levels of pro-inflammatory genes, which in turn correlated with faster physical recovery from a stressful situation.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that shows rapid alterations in gene expression within subjects associated with mindfulness meditation practice,” says study author Richard J. Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

…Mindfulness-based trainings have shown beneficial effects on inflammatory disorders in prior clinical studies and are endorsed by the American Heart Association as a preventative intervention. The new results provide a possible biological mechanism for therapeutic effects.

…Perhaps surprisingly, the researchers say, there was no difference in the tested genes between the two groups of people at the start of the study. The observed effects were seen only in the meditators following mindfulness practice. In addition, several other DNA-modifying genes showed no differences between groups, suggesting that the mindfulness practice specifically affected certain regulatory pathways.

However, it is important to note that the study was not designed to distinguish any effects of long-term meditation training from those of a single day of practice. Instead, the key result is that meditators experienced genetic changes following mindfulness practice that were not seen in the non-meditating group after other quiet activities — an outcome providing proof of principle that mindfulness practice can lead to epigenetic alterations of the genome.

…”Our genes are quite dynamic in their expression and these results suggest that the calmness of our mind can actually have a potential influence on their expression,” Davidson says.”

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Sources:

University of Wisconsin

Spirit Science and Metaphysics

Science of the Heart -(HeartMath.org)

When we’re feeling positive emotions, like appreciation, love, compassion, or care, the heart generates the largest rhythmic electromagnetic field produced in the body.

Analyzing the heart’s electromagnetic field shows that emotional information is encoded and modulated into those fields

By learning to shift our emotions, we can change the emotional information that is radiated by the magnetic fields of our hearts…and that can impact those around us.

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If you liked this, check out HeartMath.org

for more research on the science of the heart ❤

Why Your Brain Cares How You Cope – (Forbes)

Here are some excerpts from a fascinating article about methods for coping with unhappiness or stress.

Last year, a Harvard study confirmed that there’s a clear connection between mind wandering and unhappiness. Not only did  the study find that if you’re awake, your mind is wandering almost half the time, it also found that this wandering is linked to a less happy state. (You can actually use the iPhone app used in the study to track your own happiness.) This is not surprising, since when your mind is wandering, it’s not generally to the sweet things in your life: More likely, it’s to thoughts like why your electric bill was so high, why your boss was rude to you today, or why your ex-husband is being so difficult.

Another study found that mind wandering is linked to activation of network of brain cells called the default mode network (DMN), which is active not when we’re doing high-level processing, but when we’re drifting about in “self-referential” thoughts.

Meditation is an interesting method for increasing one’s sense of happiness because not only has it stood the test of time, but it’s also been tested quite extensively in the lab. Part of the effect of mindfulness meditation is to quiet the mind by acknowledging non-judgmentally and then relinquishing (rather than obsessing about) unhappy or stress-inducing thoughts.

New research by Judson Brewer, MD, PhD and his group at Yale University has found that experienced meditators not only report less mind wandering during meditation, but actually have markedly decreased activity in their DMN. Earlier research had shown that meditators have less activity in regions governing thoughts about the self, like the medial prefrontal cortex: Brewer says that what’s likely going on in experienced meditators is that these “‘me’ centers of the brain are being deactivated.”

They also found that when the brain’s “me” centers were activated, meditators also co-activated areas important in self-monitoring and cognitive control, which may indicate that they are on the constant lookout for “me” thoughts or mind-wandering – and when their minds do wander, they bring them back to the present moment. Even better, meditators not only did this during meditation, but when not being told to do anything in particular. This suggests that they may have formed a new default mode: one that is more present-centered (and less “me”-centered), no matter what they are doing.

“This is really cool,” Brewer says. “As far as we know, nobody has seen this type of connectivity pattern before. These networks have previously been shown to be anti-correlated.”

So is being happy all about shifting our tendency away from focus on ourselves? Research in other areas, like neurotheology (literally the neurology of religion), suggests that there may be something to this. Andy Newberg, MD at the University of Pennsylvania has found that both in meditating monks and in praying nuns, areas of the brain important in concentration and attention were activated, while areas that govern how a person relates to the external world were deactivated. These findings may suggest that for people who practice meditation or prayer, the focus becomes less on the self as a distinct entity from the external world, and more on connection between the two.  This reflects the idea discussed earlier where shifting attention from inside to outside is at least part of what quells unhappiness.

These findings on meditation and prayer are fascinating. If you would like to read the original article, you will read about smoking as a way of coping, and how addictions that are intended for coping with unhappiness or stress actually cause MORE unpleasantness.

Clothes and Self-Perception – (NY Times)

If you are into personal development, you might be familiar with the idea of State (how you feel, which affects your choice of behavior) as popularly described by Anthony Robbins and other educators. You might also be aware of the idea that your clothes affect your State subconsciously. With these fascinating experiments, we can see that there is some observable and measurable effect on your behavior, by your clothes.

In this article from NYTimes.com, we can read about 3 experiments that study the effects of clothes on ability.

Here are some highlights:

If you wear a white coat that you believe belongs to a doctor, your ability to pay attention increases sharply. But if you wear the same white coat believing it belongs to a painter, you will show no such improvement.

So scientists report after studying a phenomenon they call enclothed cognition: the effects of clothing on cognitive processes.

It is not enough to see a doctor’s coat hanging in your doorway, said Adam D. Galinsky, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, who led the study. The effect occurs only if you actually wear the coat and know its symbolic meaning — that physicians tend to be careful, rigorous and good at paying attention.

We think not just with our brains but with our bodies, Dr. Galinsky said, and our thought processes are based on physical experiences that set off associated abstract concepts. Now it appears that those experiences include the clothes we wear.

Does your outfit alter how you approach and interact with the world? So Dr. Galinsky and his colleague Hajo Adam conducted three experiments in which the clothes did not vary but their symbolic meaning was manipulated.

In the first, 58 undergraduates were randomly assigned to wear a white lab coat or street clothes. Then they were given a test for selective attention based on their ability to notice incongruities, as when the word “red” appears in the color green. Those who wore the white lab coats made about half as many errors on incongruent trials as those who wore regular clothes.

In the second experiment, 74 students were randomly assigned to one of three options: wearing a doctor’s coat, wearing a painter’s coat or seeing a doctor’s coat. Then they were given a test for sustained attention. They had to look at two very similar pictures side by side on a screen and spot four minor differences, writing them down as quickly as possible.

Those who wore the doctor’s coat, which was identical to the painter’s coat, found more differences. They had acquired heightened attention. Those who wore the painter’s coat or were primed with merely seeing the doctor’s coat found fewer differences between the images.

The third experiment explored this priming effect more thoroughly. Does simply seeing a physical item, like the coat, affect behavior? Students either wore a doctor’s coat or a painter’s coat, or were told to notice a doctor’s lab coat displayed on the desk in front of them for a long period of time. All three groups wrote essays about their thoughts on the coats. Then they were tested for sustained attention.

Again, the group that wore the doctor’s coat showed the greatest improvement in attention. You have to wear the coat, see it on your body and feel it on your skin for it to influence your psychological processes, Dr. Galinsky said.

Clothes invade the body and brain, putting the wearer into a different psychological state.

Click here for the full article on NYTimes.com

Abundance is Our Future – Peter Diamandis TED Talk

Onstage at TED2012, Peter Diamandis makes a case for optimism — that we’ll invent, innovate and create ways to solve the challenges that loom over us. “I’m not saying we don’t have our set of problems; we surely do. But ultimately, we knock them down.”

The news media preferentially feeds us negative stories because that’s what our minds pay attention to. It’s no wonder people think the world is getting worse.

But we have the potential to create a world of abundance.

We are now more empowered as individuals to take on the challenges of this planet.

We are moving into extraordinary decades ahead.

Technology, communication, and information are revolutionizing the human experience on Earth.

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If you would like to see more videos like this, check out TED Talks 😉

Low-Fat Diet and Stress Management Slow Cell Aging

In a paper published in the journal Lancet Oncology, scientists found that a small group of men who made changes in the way they ate and handled their emotional needs showed longer telomeres in their cells.

That’s exciting because previous research suggested that telomeres, which are protein and DNA-based complexes that cap the ends of chromosomes, regulate the aging of cells. Each time a cell divides, a section of telomeres erodes, and, like a burning candle wick, when telomeres are exhausted, so is the life of the cell.

In the latest study, the scientists, led by Dr. Dean Ornish, … followed 35 men diagnosed with prostate cancer who agreed to have their chromosomes scrutinized over a period of five years. Ornish’s team recruited the men beginning in 2003, for a study looking at whether changing lifestyle behaviors alone could influence progression of their cancer. Some of the men made comprehensive lifestyle changes that included diet, exercise and stress management, while the remainder continued with their existing diet and physical activity plans. In 2005, the group reported that the men who ate a plant-based, low-fat diet high in whole grains, exercised at a moderate intensity for 30 minutes a day, six days a week, took stress management classes including yoga stretching or meditation, and participated in support groups, were less likely to have prostate tumors that progressed compared to the men who weren’t assigned to the program.

…the fact that the more faithfully the men who made the lifestyle changes adhered to their plant-based diet, their exercise regimen, their stress management techniques and support group schedule, the longer their telomeres were, suggests that the effect is not only real, but sustainable. “The more you change, the more you improve at any age,” says Ornish. “It’s not all-or-nothing, and that’s a profoundly empowering message to give to people.”

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Saw this article on Tony Robbins’ Twitter =)
If you would like to know more about the experiment, click on this: Low-fat diet and less stress slow cell aging | TIME.com http://healthland.time.com/2013/09/16/eat-better-and-stress-less-itll-make-your-cells-and-maybe-you-live-longer/#ixzz2jmxV7ELn

The Brain Wave Spectrum

Money and Energy – Bruce Lipton

Money is Energy.

Our cells rely on Energy. Without Energy there is no Life.

Fundamentally, you have an Energy budget that gives you Life.

In the body, Energy is in “coins” called ATP, that represent units of Energy.

ATP are like gasoline to a car, they fuel our biological processes.

We need ATP to stay alive, and so there is an ATP “account” in your body right now.

How are you managing the amount of ATP you have?

About 25% of the total Energy in your whole body is used to operate your brain.

As you are using your brain, as you are thinking, you are using Energy.

Are you using your thoughts, your Energy, productively?

Or are you using them counterproductively?

Every time you have a thought, you use Energy.

Our thoughts create our reality.

What you focus on with your thoughts, your brain will manifest as reality.

For everything you do in your life, you put out Energy.

What kinds of things are you investing your Energy into?

Are you investing Energy productively to enhance your life?

Or are you wasting your Energy, throwing it away?

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If you liked this, check out more from Bruce Lipton