Leafy Pleasures & Tranquil Woodlands!

Henry David Thoreau famously fled to a small cabin on Massachusetts’ Walden Pond to recoup his mental faculties. The American writer, it seems, didn’t just inspire generations of poets both good and bad. He also may have stumbled across a prescription for better health. A new study shows that even brief encounters with parks or forests may have beneficial impacts on human hormone cycles, critical to the body’s response to stress.

The benefits of fresh air and a brisk hike–call it the Thoreau effect–are well known to scientists. In a previous study, for instance, Japanese researchers explored the relationship simply by taking a few urbanites on a walk through a forest. After this Shinrin-yoku, or “forest bathing,” the participants’ blood pressures dropped noticeably.

But Catharine Ward Thompson of the University of Edinburgh and colleagues wanted to test how routine, or even chance, brush-ups with greenery might affect the body. To do that, they tracked 35 unemployed people between the ages of 35-55 living in Dundee, just north of Scotland’s capital in the United Kingdom. Specifically, the team monitored daily fluctuations in the Scots’ cortisol levels. This hormone, involved in the stress response, typically peaks in the blood after waking and drops to near zero during sleep.

Forget the apple-a-day rule, the authors found. Proximity to green areas, from forest preserves to walking trails and city parks, seemed to be a recipe for better well-being, Thompson and colleagues report in Landscape and Urban Planning. The subjects that lived closer to greenery claimed to be less anxious than their counterparts trapped in the city, according to surveys. And their stress hormones, measured in saliva, also cycled more uniformly. Such ebbs and flow appear to signal good mental health, the team says. In contrast, individuals diagnosed with clinical depression or post-traumatic stress disorder display flattened out levels of cortisol.

One reason green may be a balm, the authors conclude, is that people often meet up with friends in green areas–a sure-fire cure for nerves. Or, like Thoreau, they may just feel more at home with their toes in the grass. Either way, it’s a good lesson for city planners. – Daniel Strain | February 5, 2012

Source: Thompson CW, et al. (2012) More green space is linked to less stress in deprived communities: Evidence from salivary cortisol patterns. Landscape and Urban Planning. 

FYI: Do Animals Dream?

FYI: Do Animals Dream?

original article from Popular Science by Kaitlin Miller

Yes. Many pet owners have seen their sleeping dog or cat twitch or paw the air, as if dreaming of bones to bury or mice to chase. Stanley Coren, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia and author of the book The Intelligence of Dogs, says that canines go through the same sleep stages as we do, only faster.

After about 20 minutes, a dog enters REM sleep, the stage in which most vivid dreams occur. Big dogs dream longer, Coren says, and little dogs dream quickly and frequently. He doesn’t know why, and neither does anyone else. Insects and fish don’t experience REM sleep, but some birds and all mammals do. Reptiles might also experience REM, and some scientists argue that our mammalian dreaming might be a holdover from our reptilian brains.

The purpose of dreaming remains a mystery, but infants (of all species) dream more often. This is probably because the sensory stimulation helps form new neural connections. In adults, the best working theory is that dreams stimulate the regions of the brain associated with memory. Finches replay the melody of their birdsong in their dreams, and lab rats retrace the mazes they have run!

Elegant Simplicity

Elegant simplicity - a notion well worth considering, as it potentially offers a partial solution in terms of personal behavior and habits to a number of our burgeoning environmental problems. First of all, what is elegant simplicity? The simplicity part may be viewed as follows:

Elegant Simplicity - Live Happy. Live Simply. Live Happy...

Although sometimes people think simplicity means a kind of 'hippie' lifestyle, that is not an accurate nor fair perspective. Simplicity is a positive quality; when things are simple they are well-made, they last indefinitely, they are made with pleasure and they give pleasure when used. It was E.F. Schumacher who said, "Any fool can make things complicated, but it requires a genius to make things simple."

Simplicity requires less ego and more imagination, less complication and more creativity, less glamour and more gratitude, less attention to appearance and more attention to essence.

The elegant part is in how, if more and more of us shift towards embracing this sort of simplicity in our lives, the easier it becomes to tackle some of our most tangled environmental problems.  Simplicity becomes the most elegant solution...

Keep It Simple ... A Sound Philosophy To Live By

Climate Change, Oil Spills Just Symptoms of Bigger Problem: The world recession and related international political campaigns focused on increasing consumer consumption to boost the economy, which is no way to tackle climate change nor is it an effective way to manage natural resource consumption.  However, we arrogant humans always assume our needs {read wants} take precedence over something so mundane as Mother Nature!

Like most people involved in the environmental movement, this old ungulate spends his time talking vaguely about the need to reduce the consumption of goods, but specifically about the need to reduce the direct consumption of energy - as that is the crux of the world's environmental damage. But however well we insulate our homes, change our travel habits, alter the electricity supply and switch to more efficient appliances; however much the public sector cleans up its act and the efficiency of commercial buildings is improved, we'll still only be scratching the surface of the problem.

The bigger problem is the excessive consumption of goods and ecologically unsustainable consumption of natural resources. Living beyond the carrying capacity of the planet, consuming natural resources beyond the ability of the planet to regenerate them. Virtually every single environmental problem we face--the BP oil spill being a particularly graphic example--is but a symptom of this greater problem.

How you get to a state of elegant simplicity reveals the solution. Modern consumer culture is solidly rooted in trend, fashion and cool. Planned obsolescence, while normally associated with electronics and gadgets, equally applies to the fashion industry, and nearly every category of consumer good. More items than not are not particularly well made or styled to last. And even when they are, you are told by changing trends that whatever you have is last season and unhip. Even our homes, which should last several generations with basic upkeep, are superficial and cheaply made shells which require chronic renovation and a focal point of consumerism.  These shells, referred to as our homes, are more often than not a mere repository of consumer goods that requires changing on an almost constant basis!

Break out of that. Banish hipness and cool from your vocabulary. What's next, ecologically speaking, is what you already have. Five shirts that are well made and timeless is the more elegant wardrobe solution than a revolving closet of disposable clothing.

Whether by economic necessity--let's remember that for more people than not in the world owning five shirts at a time is a financial stretch--or by choice, embracing the simplicity of only purchasing what is needed and ensuring it lasts is far more elegant than the most well-crafted but constantly changing couture.

This is how you pare things down. Consider every decision to buy, to consume, carefully. Will the item give lasting pleasure? Meaning, is it something that will satisfy the need it was designed to fill indefinitely? Is it joyful to use? Was it made with pleasure? Meaning, considering the entire chain of manufacture and marketing, was the item made with care or just churned out in unhealthful conditions? In general, ask yourself if you've lived this long without the item at hand, do you really need it now.

By heading the advice to focus not on appearance but on the essence whenever faced with consumption, you will inevitably reduce your consumption and your impact on the planet. By becoming less concerned with glamor (looking outside for validation, creating separation) and more concerned with gratitude (looking inward and realizing interconnection) you will also naturally tread more lightly. In embracing and internalizing simplicity you will unwittingly both improve your own life, by stepping outside the current of trend, and help improve the world we all live in, by reducing your ecological impact. THAT is the essence of elegant simplicity...

Live Simply. Live Happy. Live Happy...