A hug or touch can have a major influence on mood, overall attitude, and even income. Image via Wikipedia
I’m not a very “huggy” person, but this article makes me give that attitude a second thought. Touch, particularly the non-sexual kind, has many benefits for humans, such as creating friendly feelings, calming nerves, and help others be more sympathetic.
Touch is a sense that’s often forgotten. But touch is also vital in the way we understand and experience the world. Even the lightest touch on the upper arm can influence the way we think. To prove it, here are 10 psychological effects which show just how powerful nonsexual touch can be.
One job that has always sounded super fun is playground designer. Playgrounds can be fun, exciting, inspiring places, full of color, creative design, and above all inspire play. Some of the different playground designs from around Sweden got the spotlight recently on Flickr.
[Last week], @megrosker shared a link to Swedish Aesthetic, a gallery featuring colorful and very creative Swedish playground designs and play structures… be sure to visit the gallery for all photos curated by PlayGroundology.
view the gallery via Swedish playground design « Flickr Blog. PlayGroundology’s photostream includes photos from Canada and other adventures around the world.
Flickr has quite a few different playground designs scattered throughout the Flickrverse:
I even got so inspired I started my own Playground gallery on Flickr. Check it out, and if you have any photos you’d like to contribute, let me know.
Adults are starting to turn fitness back into play. Image via Wikipedia
I have noticed a growing trend in fitness. Rather than taking Spin classes or training to run marathons, or even heavy weight lifting, many adults are starting to pay to play. They are buying gym memberships or punch cards for classes that offer an hour of having fun! Many classes that incorporate dance, parkour, or toys like hula hoops or trampolines, are starting to become very popular all over the United States.
The majority of these classes are geared towards women. Jazzercise has had a resurgence in popularity the past couple of years, while new fitness classes like Zumba or HoopDance are starting to surface. There are also trampolining classes offered in some places. Below are descriptions of some of these classes for those of you like me who had no idea what these classes were exactly, (thanks to Vibe Dance Studio and Sky High Sport for descriptions):
Zumba: This Adult Fitness class features easy-to-follow routines of interval training sessions where fast and slow Latin rhythms and resistance training are combined to tone and sculpt your body while burning fat. Add some Latin flavor and international zest into the mix and you’ve got a Zumba class!
HoopDance: This fun, low impact Adult Fitness class will tone the entire body while using a hula hoop on and off the body. You will explore dancing while hooping and linking moves together to create a feeling a flow. This class will build coordination, body awareness, and is great for any fitness level. You laugh and smile while learning a new skill and burning calories.
AIRobics, or trampolining: AIRobics is low impact fat burning exercise that improves balance and coordination and it is fun and energizing! The workout consists of moves from many different workout activities, and it incorporates some moves that can only be done on a trampoline.
For men, there are also options: rock climbing has been around in the U.S. since the mid to late 70s, and gyms geared towards those athletes opened up soon after. More recently sports like Parkour or Freerunning are also being offered in gym or class settings. Interestingly, at least anecdotally it seems that women are more likely to try these “manly” sports in the safe confines of a gym and with a coach’s guidance.
Adult recreational sports are also gaining popularity, from rugby and soccer to even roller derby.
Why the sudden increase in playful classes and gym offerings?
I suspect it’s because we adults are super stressed out (according to the American Psychological Association, Three quarters of Americans experience physical and psychological symptoms related to stress in a given month) and don’t get enough time to play and relax, but know we need to workout and at least attempt to stay healthy. Rather than do the traditional workout activities like running or lifting weights, which some find relaxing while others just find it tedious or stressful or even painful, I think many adults figure if they’re going to devote what little time they have to working out, it might as well be FUN!
What are your thoughts, experiences, attitudes towards fitness? Have you discovered other fun sports teams or classes that people wouldn’t usually think of as fitness-focused?
It’s Friday, and I’m looking forward to the weekend, and apparently so is the rest of the online world. A team of sociologists measured the amount of “happy” tweets people put out around the world, and found it matched previously known patterns of happiness trends:
Drawing on messages posted by more than two million people in 84 countries, researchers discovered that the emotional tone of people’s messages followed a similar pattern not only through the day but also through the week and the changing seasons. The new analysis suggests that our moods are driven in part by a shared underlying biological rhythm that transcends culture and environment.
The report, by sociologists at Cornell University and appearing in the journal Science, is the first cross-cultural study of daily mood rhythms in the average person using such text analysis. Previous studies have also mined the mountains of data pouring into social media sites, chat rooms, blogs and elsewhere on the Internet, but looked at collective moods over broader periods of time, in different time zones or during holidays.
Studying emotions through Twitter and other social media can always be a little tricky (for example, most algorithms don’t get sarcasm). But, that aside, I am very intrigued to see the results that market researchers and sociologists are finding using social media, and seeing how much our “real” lives are accurately reflected in our online worlds as well.
Park(ing) Day in Indianapolis. Image by DanO'Connor via Flickr
Today in Seattle, S.F., and other major cities, activists are taking over one or several parking spaces and turning them into parks!
PARK(ing) Day is an annual, worldwide event that invites city dwellers to transform metered parking spots into parks for the day. PARK(ing) Day in Seattle happens to fall on the first day of the [Seattle Design] Festival.
We’ll be partnering with the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) at their impromptu “park.” Drop by and join us in a Festival photo/design activity open to everyone.
SAM will also be offering an all-ages, hands-on artmaking activity; an artist-designed Cornhole game (bean bag toss); and a noon concert by James Whetzel, classically trained on the sarod and tabla.
More via the Seattle Design Festival, which is going on from the 16th until the 25th! The festival is also pretty relevant since its goal is to explore our environments, how we use them, and how to make them better.
I was able to go see the Seattle exhibit last year, but unfortunately am parked at work today, so go see it and report back. Last year they had lots of games and give aways, and maps featuring the many parks that are scattered around the Seattle metro area.
Check out some of the other Park(ing) Day Related articles:
A lot of parents freak out about how to provide enriching environments for their children and help them grow, from music lessons to early reading to math flash cards.
In one of those “well duh” books, two neuroscientists, Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang remind us it doesn’t take all that much…
Babies may look helpless, but as soon as they come into the world, they’re able to do a number of important things. They can recognize faces and moving objects. They’re attracted to language. And from very early on, they can differentiate their mother from other humans.
“They really come equipped to learn about the world in a way that wasn’t appreciated until recently,” says neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt. “It took scientists a long time to realize that their brains are doing some very complicated things.”
Aamodt and fellow neuroscientist Sam Wang explain how the human brain develops from infancy to adolescence in their new book, Welcome to Your Child’s Brain. The two researchers also offer tips for parents to help their children eat their spinach, learn their ABCs and navigate elementary school.
They talk with Terry Gross about complicated concepts like self control, abstract thought, and things that are even hard for some grown-ups, and how to create an environment that makes kids want to practice these things.
Reading fiction can improve empathy. Image via Wikipedia
I had a great vacation – I got out into nature, I slept in (some mornings when I wasn’t out looking for wildlife), and I even read a little bit. Turns out the reading was good for me in more ways than one; reading is not only relaxing, some studies find it improves empathy:
Shira Gabriel and Ariana Young, both from the psychology department at the University of Buffalo, gave 140 undergraduate students passages to read from either the Harry Potter series or the Twilight series. Afterward, the students were asked how much they related to the characters in the novels. Gabriel and Young found that despite the fact that both the stories rely heavily on otherworldly magic and mysticism, the undergrads felt a real affinity for the characters. “[T]he study found that participants who read the Harry Potter chapters self-identified as wizards, whereas participants who read the Twilight chapter self-identified as vampires,” they wrote. ”
And “belonging” to these fictional communities actually provided the same mood and life satisfaction people get from affiliations with real-life groups. Books provide the opportunity for social connection and the blissful calm that comes from becoming a part of something larger than oneself for a precious, fleeting moment.”
Raymond Mar, a professor at York University, has also noticed the link between reading and empathy. In a study of children, Mar found that the more a child reads, the likelier she is to be able to understand the emotions of others.
Interesting study to keep you motivated while I’m off in the woods:
Kids are spending less and less time outdoors. Why? We’re becoming more and more wired in and dependent on technology:
There is a growing disparity between the time kids spend indoors wired to technology and the time they spend outside enjoying nature. The vast majority of today’s kids use a computer, watch TV, or play video games on a daily basis, but only about 10 percent say they are spending time outdoors every day, according to a new nationwide poll from The Nature Conservancy.Why? Lack of access to natural areas and discomfort with the outdoors are two primary factors identified by the Conservancy’s poll.The poll was conducted from July 28 through August 4, and asked 602 kids between the ages of 13 and 18 about their attitudes toward nature, outdoor activity and environmental issues.
Off into the wild blue yonder this week. Image via Wikipedia
I will be on vacation this week, as sort of a decompression from summer and respite before I jump full on into Fall, Winter, and all that ensues.
I intend to spend as much time as possible in nature, listening, smelling, seeing, and overall experiencing the amazing world that is around me. Spotting animals, smelling trees, water, flowers, and moss, feeling the crunch of leaves and rocks beneath my feet, hearing the wind blow through the leaves and listen for animal calls, and taste the heat in the hot afternoon sun and cold at early dawn.
I encourage everyone to take 20 minutes sometime between now and when I get back to just go outside, find a comfortable, quiet place to sit – under a tree, near some water, on the street corner near your house – and just listen, smell, taste, and watch. Listen to all the noises. What’s the closest noise, what’s the farthest noise? How many animals can you spot? How many different smells can you pick up? Breathe fully into your lungs and slowly let the air out, feeling it work its way through your nose, throat, and lungs.
Give yourself this 20 minute vacation, even just once this week, and I guarantee your environment will feel fuller, richer, and you’ll feel more in tune with your surroundings.
This post is a total plug on my part of an activity meant to encourage people to go out and get their hands dirty, improve their environment, and help nature at the same time: Rain gardens!
Gardening season is coming to an end for most of us, but it’s not too late to plant a rain garden for this winter’s torrents.
Rain gardens are becoming more popular, especially in places like Seattle with significant rain and run-off, and I suspect also because they’re very low maintenance; you simply plant, water them until they’re established, and let nature to the rest. They also make the neighborhood look nicer than just having a strip of grass between your car and the sidewalk.
The West Seattle neighborhood is actively encouraging residents to plant rain gardens:
The gardens are part of a campaign by Washington State University and the non-profit Stewardship Partners. Their goal is to install 12,000 rain gardens in Puget Sound communities by 2016. So far, more than 700 gardens have been installed (see a map of them) and more are being added every week.
“Twelve thousand gardens will absorb approximately 160 million gallons of stormwater each year,” said Stacey Gianas, who is with Stewardship Partners.
That much water would fill 250 Olympic swimming pools. And its stormwater, which washes over roofs and streets, picking up all kinds of pollution. Usually that contaminant-filled water runs into storm drains that empty into waterways and rivers.
Mental Flowers 