tag > Health
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I'm Laughing – Insights from Nerdful Mind
I’m laughing and I hope you do, too. At least sometimes. Laughter decreases levels of cortisol and epinephrine, and releases dopamine and serotonin. This makes you feel less stressed, more relaxed, and happier (study). Laughter also improves your immune system by enhancing the effectiveness of T-cells (study) and increasing the number of antibody-producing cells (study). Besides the research, laughing just feels refreshing. And it’s contagious, so people around you can enjoy it, too! Some people laugh less than others, and I’m certainly a smile-more-laugh-less type of person. So a few years ago I made the deliberate choice to laugh out loud more.
Tips for laughing more:
- Spend time with people who make you laugh
- Find comics, videos or jokes that make you laugh and save them for when you need some humour
- Just laugh - smiling on purpose can make you happier (study), so laughing on purpose could do the same thing
“Laughter lets me relax. It’s the equivalent of taking a deep breath, letting it out and saying, ‘This, too, will pass’.” — Odette Pollar
Reading Recommendations
Weekly Mindfulness Practice
- Take a deep breath and let everything go.
- Close your eyes.
- Think about one thing, moment, or person who made you happy today.
- Enjoy that feeling for a few breaths.
- Open your eyes with a smile.
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The Importance of Posture
Posture ranks right up at the top of the list when you are talking about good health. It is as important as eating right, exercising, getting a good night’s sleep and avoiding potentially harmful substances like alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. Good posture is a way of doing things with more energy, less stress, and fatigue. Without good posture, you can’t really be physically fit.
In addition, poor posture can affect:
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Interspecies Communication Matters
In France, a beautiful 15-year-old stallion named Peyo often comes to comfort and soothe terminal patients at the Techer Hospital in Calais. The horse chooses which patient he wants to see, kicking his hoof outside the door.
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Think of the current time as the world’s largest ever human IQ test..
"If you have to be persuaded, reminded, pressured, lied to, incentivized, coerced, bullied, socially shamed, guilt-tripped, threatened, punished and criminalized... If all of this is considered necessary to gain your compliance - you can be absolutely certain that what is being promoted is not in your best interest." - Ian Watson
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The Chinese ‘lying flat’ movement (tangping, 躺平)
An illustration making the rounds on China’s internet in May 2021 shows a man “lying flat.” “You want me to get up?” he asks. “That’s not possible in this lifetime.” The drive toward self-reliance has encountered an unlikely form of resistance in a generation of young Chinese who balk at the Party’s high-minded calls for “continued struggle” alongside an deeply engrained culture of overwork without the promise of real advancement. They opt instead for “lying flat,” or tangping (躺平). The “lying flat” movement calls on young workers and professionals, including the middle-class Chinese who are to be the engine of Xi Jinping’s domestic boom, to opt out of the struggle for workplace success, and to reject the promise of consumer fulfilment.
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38% of remote workers work from bed (Axios)
45% of American teleworkers regularly work from a couch, 38% regularly work from bed and 20% often work outside, according to a study.
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The door to the dining area of the Alcobaça Monastery in Portugal, was made narrow so that monks who got too fat were forced to go into fasting.
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The weird power of the placebo effect, explained - Yes, placebo is all in your mind. And it’s real.
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"A lie keeps growing and growing until it's as clear as the nose on your face." - The Blue Fairy, from Pinocchio
