Body Happiness: Your Own Darn Behaviors!

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Think_n_See

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Mar 15, 2006, 1:02:16 AM3/15/06
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Eye-opening article sent to me by a friend recently.
Here are some excerpts in quotation marks, but I recommend you read the
whole thing.

* "That is, [people a]re sick because of how they choose to live their
lives, not because of environmental or genetic factors beyond their
control. Continued Levey: "Even as far back as when I was in medical
school" -- he enrolled at Harvard in 1955 -- "many articles
demonstrated that 80% of the health-care budget was consumed by five
behavioral issues." Levey didn't bother to name them, but you don't
need an MD to guess what he was talking about: too much smoking,
drinking, eating, and stress, and not enough exercise."

Asking heart patients to change their habits was not working...
* "The patients lived the way they did as a day-to-day strategy for
coping with their emotional troubles. "Telling people who are lonely
and depressed that they're going to live longer if they quit smoking or
change their diet and lifestyle is not that motivating," Ornish says.
"Who wants to live longer when you're in chronic emotional pain?"
So instead of trying to motivate them with the "fear of dying,"
Ornish reframes the issue. He inspires a new vision of the "joy of
living" -- convincing them they can feel better, not just live longer.
That means enjoying the things that make daily life pleasurable, like
making love or even taking long walks without the pain caused by their
disease. "Joy is a more powerful motivator than fear," he says. "

So interesting!!
* "The big challenge in trying to change how people think is that their
minds rely on frames, not facts. "Neuroscience tells us that each of
the concepts we have -- the long-term concepts that structure how we
think -- is instantiated in the synapses of the brain," Lakoff says.
"Concepts are not things that can be changed just by someone telling us
a fact. We may be presented with facts, but for us to make sense of
them, they have to fit what is already in the synapses of the brain."
This is almost exactly word for word what a physical therapist will
tell you about an injury: you have to make sure the ligaments grow back
in the right alignment, or else it'll be painful scar tissue as opposed
to helpful scar tissue.

* "Howard Gardner, a cognitive scientist, MacArthur Fellow "genius"
award winner, and professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education,
has looked at what works most effectively for heads of state and
corporate CEOs. "When one is addressing a diverse or heterogeneous
audience," he says, "the story must be simple, easy to identify with,
emotionally resonant, and evocative of positive experiences." "

* "Reframing alone isn't enough, of course. That's where Dr. Ornish's
other astonishing insight comes in. Paradoxically, he found that
radical, sweeping, comprehensive changes are often easier for people
than small, incremental ones."

Read the entire last section: "This Is Your Brain on Change"!!! It
includes super-interesting things using a flute player example, and
talking about brain plasticity and learning.

Article:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/94/open_change-or-die.html

da5zeay

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Mar 16, 2006, 11:24:04 AM3/16/06
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Wow! That's great! Thanks for posting this...I've thought about similar
things but didn't know what they were called in cogsci terms, so now I
have a new entry point for the research! Awesome!

Indeed

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Mar 30, 2006, 10:33:14 AM3/30/06
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Does most of physical health really come from a healthy brain?
Is the body entirely healthy because the brain is in order?

... this makes me think I really should challenge my brain, and play
more mental games - more reading, more crossword puzzles, more taking
classes in foreign languages. What are other ways I could brain-play?

I like also these thoughts on "brain plasticity":
http://groups.google.com/group/happinessgroup/browse_frm/thread/66f2b9bbb128d0b9/?hl=en#
And this research by Marian Diamond about the healthy, happy brain:
http://groups.google.com/group/happinessgroup/browse_frm/thread/9fed4d761a1e3e36/?hl=en#
So interesting and so new!

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