Thin Slices of Joy
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Some gorgeous photos featuring Canadian parks.
https://twitter.com/meanwhileincana/status/8718000...
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doggie hygge?
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Serenity - They showed the clip of the mower w/tornado in background yesterday evening on Inside Edition, a syndicated news program. Now, they did say that the twister was further away than it appeared. Guess he wanted to tidy up the lawn before getting blown away. Hahaha!
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He was a man on a mission!
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I would like to try this!
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Hate when ice gets stuck on my nose!
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Showers feel good.
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They have warts?!? I've held a baby octopus and got inked.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/501535/scientists-t...
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They are adorable!
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Frozen mangoes are refreshing. And good for mango margaritas.
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I graduated from physiotherapy! I still have some tingling when I exercise or sit too long. She said that would continue for a year or 18 months because I've had sciatica for so long. Some of it may be due to the decreased Lyrica dosage not masking the nerve pain. I'm still amazed at the difference in how I feel. I can almost touch my toes!
The Classical Stretch has been great for my sciatica and the tightness from the mastectomy. I keep the last 5 episodes on my PVR, but I do the ones that focus on posture or overall flexibility. Highly recommend!
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Good doggies.
10 Amazing Facts About Our Bond With Dogs
They've been our companions for tens of thousands of years. They share our beds, follow us into the bathroom, and star in our holiday cards. The beautiful friendship between
Homo sapiens and Canis lupus familiaris has had some surprising effects on both species—read on to learn more about the ways we've helped each other along the way.
1. IMPROVED IMMUNITY
Living with furry friends, especially dogs, has been shown to decrease babies' and kids' risk for asthma, allergies, and other immune conditions. Some studies have found that the benefits can begin as early as the womb. Scientists aren't completely sure why this happens; it may be that bacteria on the dogs' bodies can help give our immune systems a boost during a crucial moment in our development.
2. INCREASED FOCUS
Keeping your phone loaded with pictures of your pet may pay off in the long run. In one 2012 experiment, people who looked at pictures of puppies scored higher on tasks that required their close attention. Photos of older dogs were less effective; the researchers say it might be that baby animals inspire a specific type of positive emotion and mental activation.
3. A THIRST FOR PRAISE
Dogs are social animals; that's part of the reason we were able to tame them in the first place. And once we take them in, they really start to care what we think. Experiments with dogs and their owners have shown that when given the choice between snacks and praise, most prefer being told what good dogs they are.
4. MORE CHILL
Sharing your life with a drooling, adoring furry friend is good for your attitude and your stress levels. Spending time with dogs can ease tension and stress. Studies have found that this is especially true in high-stress situations like crises, natural disasters, and the office.
5. HEALTHIER HEARTS
Reduced stress is its own reward, but it can also have long-term health benefits, including lower blood pressure, lowered heart rate, and a decreased risk of heart disease. This works even in little doses: just petting a dog for a few minutes sends feel-good chemicals to the brain and can soothe a frazzled nervous system.
6. INTERSPECIES EMPATHY
All those millennia together have made a real impression on dogs' brains. One 2016 study found that dogs could read and respond to the emotions on human faces, even in photographs. This is especially cool when you consider the major differences in body language between our two species. Dogs don't smile, but they still know what our grin means when they see it.
7. MORE EXERCISE
There's nothing like an "I've-got-to-pee-RIGHT-NOW" bark to get you up and out the door. For obvious reasons, dog owners get more casual exercise than other people. This, in turn, can also lower stress levels and improve heart health.
8. LANGUAGE LEARNING
Spoken language, like body language, differs drastically between our two species, but that hasn't stopped dogs from trying to figure ours out. A series of Hungarian experiments using MRI scanners found that dogs' brains responded to human voices speaking both positive words and with positive tone. This was true even when the positive words were spoken in a neutral tone ("good boy") and the positive tone was applied to a neutral phrase ("however!!!"). They get us.
9. A SOFT, COMFY LIFE
The good news for dogs is that domestication has given them a steady source of food, shelter, and companionship. The bad news is that all this cushy living has dulled their edges somewhat. Compared to the wolves from which they descended, pet dogs have weaker senses of hearing and smell, and they're worse at problem-solving tasks. But this isn't a problem, per se; they've simply evolved and been bred to prioritize one set of survival skills (coexisting with people) over another (sharp senses and keen minds).
10. GENETIC CONNECTION
The bond between us and our dogs is real, and may trace all the way down into dogs' DNA. Experiments have found that the most sociable pet dogs have genetic mutations that appear to make them more interested in people. Without these abnormalities, experts say, we might never have been able to domesticate dogs in the first place.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/501582/10-amazing-f...
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So adorable!
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Serenity - Loved the kilted yoga! Gives new meaning to Namaste!
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They have renewed my interest in yoga!
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G-rated post.
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Too much reading today.
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I'm back after a long absence dealing with moving and setting up house.
Love the dogs, the vids and all the stretching info. Must look for Classical Stretch on my PBS and see if they show it here.
I moved to a small house with a fenced in yard,, so one of my daily joys is getting to watch my dog RUN across the yard chasing the squirrels. She simply loves being outside, no matter the weather! Even in the rain! Even wet,, she is such a dear. I love taking her places where she is allowed to go,, and there have been multiple trips to Home Depot!
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I seem to recall looking for Classical Stretch on my PBS station before and not finding it. We did get a special by Miranda Esmonde-White, called Reversing Aging but not the Classical Stretch series. Wonder if i could request that they show it.
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glennie - Good to see you back! Happy to hear of your pup chasing squirrels. You should ask your local PBS station to show Classical Stretch. I get 2 PBS stations. When I first looked, only 1 station carried it, but I noticed recently that the other carries it now. Have you tried the nerve flossing?
My sciatica is barely noticeable as I continue to drop my dosage. Woohoo! My neck and upper back are still tight. While I work on my laptop, I can feel my left shoulder tighten, so I often have to stretch it out/do some nerve flossing. Guess it's good that my body needs more frequent breaks than my head. Wee bit of joy there.
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See? Coffee good.
Drinking coffee doesn't cramp creativity; it helps drive it
Some say Sherlock Holmes' regular use of cocaine was Doyle's vehicle to illustrate the character's moral weakness. It likely began more simply as a window into the culture of the time, when hard stimulants weren't the taboo they are today. W.H. Auden apparently did believe his own dependence on the stimulant Benzedrine to be a sign of weak character, but he still took it every working morning and endorsed its creative influences effusively. Jack Kerouac and Jean-Paul Sartre offer similar testaments. Sir Elton John sang "Bennie and the Jets" … which may be in praise of Benzedrine, but is open to interpretation, depending where you stand on mohair suits.
2013's cultural Benzedrines are Adderall (amphetamine salts) and excessive coffee. Caffeine remains non-prescription legal, and it's still universally considered benignly delightful to make offhand comments about how unproductive we are without it. "I'm a total grump if I don't get my coffee!" Funny, relatable, true. "Get out of my way when I haven't had my coffee—or I will hurt you." Consider the ice broken. "Seriously I will cut you." Okay, that's enough.
Despite its legality and social acceptance, people dependent on caffeine do occasionally betray a tenor of insecurity about it. There's an element of fear. That may be why we laugh about it. I see it in the retiring eyes of people asking me about their caffeine habits, and in the numbers of people who read and share stories we publish about coffee. A cover article titled "Is Caffeine Killing You?" would, almost regardless of its execution, probably be the most popular thing on this site. Ninety percent of people in the U.S. ingest caffeine on a daily basis, and many of them also fear death.
Meanwhile, for some, a threat to creativity is only slightly less terrifying than a threat to life. Being boring is just a notch above being malicious or genocidal in the hierarchy of human values for generation millennial. So when, last week, friend-of-The-Atlantic Maria Konnikova wrote an interesting piece for The New Yorker entitled "How Caffeine Can Cramp Creativity," it concerned people like me. That is, people who use caffeine regularly and also sometimes want to create things and be interesting. The article read, "While caffeine has numerous benefits, it appears that the drug may undermine creativity more than it stimulates it." So let's look at caffeine biochemistry for a quick second.
The basic science of caffeine goes something like this. Cyclic AMP gives your body energy. Phosphodiesterase is an enzyme that breaks down cyclic AMP. Caffeine blocks phosphodiesterase. So cyclic AMP stays around longer when you have caffeine in your blood, and you have more energy. It comes from the natural substances that your body produces and always give you energy; they just last longer.
Caffeine also blocks adenosine receptors in your brain. Stephen Braun, author of Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine, once explained it as an "indirect stimulant, as opposed to, say, amphetamine which liberates dopamine, a directly stimulating neurotransmitter. By blocking adenosine receptors, caffeine allows the brain's own stimulating neurotransmitters (i.e. glutamate and dopamine) to do their thing with greater gusto and less restraint."
I like the analogy that it turns off the body's brakes. How it affects creativity is mostly conjecture, and will vary from person to person. To say that it cramps creativity is kind of at best an interesting potential notion. It's one that begins with what is a very real and common complaint among creatives who take hard stimulants like Adderall: that it makes them too focused. The medication makes minutiae deeply stimulating, fascinating. People can get hung up for 45 minutes on what pair of pants to wear—because, have you felt corduroy?—to the point they're late to work. At least they did get the right pants.
Prescription stimulants are what enable hyperactive people to spend 12 hours memorizing organic chemistry equations. The brain is getting a natural dose of the stimulation that it might otherwise get from checking Twitter or email or taking a break to eat scones. That stuff doesn't matter anymore. It's the extreme version is what makes meth addicts spend 12 hours digging at an itchy scab on their face. Such an interesting scab, and so important to keep picking at it. It's is the state of mind of a worker bee, not an out-of-the-box creative.
The problem with this degree of focus, as Jonah Lehrer would tell us, is that moments of insight and genius come in the shower, on walks, doing hot yoga; when the mind is less focused and allowed to wander. Konnikova makes the same point: "Creative insights and imaginative solutions often occur when we stop working on a particular problem and let our mind move on to something unrelated." Overstimulated, the wandering mind's creative potential could theoretically be diminished.
She also notes, though, that caffeine "boosts energy and decreases fatigue; enhances physical, cognitive, and motor performance; and aids short-term memory, problem solving, decision making, and concentration … Caffeine prevents our focus from becoming too diffuse; it instead hones our attention in a hyper-vigilant fashion."
As someone who works with a lot of self-described creatives types, my experience is that the most common barriers to people creating are initiative, commitment, and self-doubt. Caffeine helps with all three of those. Even if there are some sort of subtle effects on free-association or Rorschach inkblots, or some people overdo it and lose sight of the big picture in a euphoric state of hyper-vigilance, I can't see that outweighing the benefits of stimulation, disinhibition, and improved ability to focus on work. Deferring to Woody Allen: "80 percent of success is showing up."
How all of this comes together to make any one of us think differently varies, of course. Case studies for caffeine endorsement abound: Simone de Beauvoir, Beethoven, Gustav Mahler, and the famous example Honoré de Balzac, who "is said to have" had 50 cups most days. He was plenty creative, but was also an eccentric man with gastric problems who died at 51 of a cardiac issue.
If you're taking in enough caffeine that it messes with your sleep, the benefit can definitely be negated. If you become to so motivated and vigilant that you spend hours perfecting every aspect of basic tasks, neglecting others, or your own relationships or hygiene, or not exercising, all of that is also no good. Like every drug, its effects can't be considered in a vacuum. Like all good things, moderation. You can't get too much moderation. "Fear can sometimes be a useful emotion."
Auden's best work came out of his Benzedrine period, but few who take hard stimulants become Auden. Adderall and caffeine likewise focus the minds of different people in different ways. A nice thing about caffeine, though, is you can legally experiment with it on yourself and your friends. If you don't have any precluding medical conditions, take a Red Bull or Full Throttle or Neurogasm or two, and then try to be creative. For example, name as many hypothetical new energy drinks as you can in, say, 14 minutes. Then test yourself sober. Another good prompt might be, why did 25,000 bumble bees die last week in a Target parking lot? Be creative. Think of as many answers as you can.
If you feel your heart beating irregularly or stopping or your eyes twitching, that was probably too much caffeine. The same goes if you only came up with one extremely elaborate answer. (Probably do get in touch with the environmental detectives on the bee case, though. Did you solve it? Keep trying until you do, because this is important.)
For most of us, expect caffeine to show some improvement in productivity on creative tasks. Of course like we've seen before ("How much caffeine before you should go to the E.R.?"), keep in mind that caffeine sends people to the hospital all the time. It's a drug: moderation, useful fear, and respect. The new DSM does include caffeine intoxication and withdrawal as psychiatric disorders, when they're bad enough to impair our day-to-day functioning. But outside of impairment-level usage, including the sort of intoxication that might mimic the hyper-focused stimulation of taking amphetamines, we really don't have evidence that it undermines creativity.
Also, using caffeine regularly is not indicative of moral weakness. Idleness and willfully unrealized potential, though, are.
https://qz.com/97318/drinking-coffee-doesnt-cramp-...
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I've had some stinging feelings in the back of my arm (surgery side). I did some shoulder/neck exercises today. Or is it from the dry brushing today? Is this improvement? I'll start tracking it in my calendar. This nerve stuff is much more interesting when I'm not in intense pain.
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Serenity - Hello. Just reading the posts today. Pardon my ignorance, but what is "dry brushing"?
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Celia - This site below has a good description. On the surgical side I follow the MLD technique. I tend to press too hard when using just my hands.
https://wellnessmama.com/26717/dry-brushing-skin/
Had a great day at a wedding. Everything was gorgeous! Photos tomorrow.
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KB - Have you seen photos of fireflies at National Geographic?
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/phot...
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