Category: Health

Happiness

Is happiness elusive?

Well the first thing that raised a smile was me putting in the word ‘happiness’ into a Google search and noticing the response – About 50,000,000 results (0.15 seconds)!

50 million results – wow.

Let me tell you that I don’t propose to cast myself as anything other than an ordinary Joe. The simple motivation behind this Post is that if a single person reading these words gets some insight into seeing their own lives in a richer way, then it’s worth while.

Let’s come at the subject from the perspective of good mental health. What’s that then?

Here’s an extract from MIND – the leading mental health charity in the UK.

From which comes this:

What do we mean by good mental health?

Good mental health isn’t something you have, but something you do. To be mentally healthy you must value and accept yourself. This means that:

You care about yourself and you care for yourself. You love yourself, not hate yourself. You look after your physical health – eat well, sleep well, exercise and enjoy yourself.

You see yourself as being a valuable person in your own right. You don’t have to earn the right to exist. You exist, so you have the right to exist.

You judge yourself on reasonable standards. You don’t set yourself impossible goals, such as ‘I have to be perfect in everything I do’, and then punish yourself when you don’t reach those goals.

If you don’t value and accept yourself, you are always frightened that other people will reject you. To prevent people seeing how unacceptable you are, you keep them at a distance, and so you are always frightened and lonely. If you value yourself, you don’t expect people to reject you. You aren’t frightened of other people. You can be open, and so you enjoy good relationships.

If you value and accept yourself, you are able to relax and enjoy yourself, without feeling guilty. When you face a crisis, you know that, no matter how difficult the situation is, you will manage. How we see ourselves is central to every decision we make. People who value and accept themselves cope with life.

The BBC, often so good at important public service issues, ran a series of programmes in 2008 under the banner of The Happiness Formula. Included in that web link is a simple test to measure one’s own happiness.

Psychologists say it is possible to measure your happiness.

This test designed by psychologist Professor Ed Diener from the University of Illinois, takes just a minute to complete.

NB: I just tried this test myself and wasn’t sure if the analysis part of the test was working – try it yourself. But the information offered is still well worth reading.

There’s more background on Prof. Diener here. And a short video below.

Perhaps more valuable is another excellent TEDtalks video Habits of Happiness.

Enjoy and smile!

By Paul Handover

The power of love

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. Jala ad-Din Rumi 1207 – 1273

One would suspect that readers of this Post title would have many different responses to the word ‘love’. Perhaps in this harsh, economically challenged world, it seems a little quaint to think about love in anything other than a romantic sense.

But, trust me, there’s nothing quaint or ‘away with the fairies’ about reminding us all of both the power of love and the urgent need to bring that power further up the scale of human consciousness. Let’s even try and aim for where dogs are. Dogs intuitively demonstrate unconditional love to those around them that they trust.

Before we look at the effects of love, let’s remind ourselves of some of the outcomes from the stress and trauma generated by present times. A news item from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine published in July, 2009, said this:

Researchers at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Oxford University estimated that soaring stress brought on by job losses could prompt a 2.4% rise in suicide rates in people under-64 years of age, a 2.7% rise in heart attack deaths in men between 30 and 44 years, and a 2.4% rise in homicides rates, corresponding to thousands of deaths in European Union countries, such as the UK.

Will Hutton, in his outstanding book, Them and Us, writes on Page 9:

Nor is the impact just economic. The sudden flipping from the wild optimism of the boom to the personal gloom and self-doubt of recession and system-wide financial crisis is bad for health and well-being.

So it appears as if there’s no shortage of reasons why engaging the power of love offers infinite possibilities for us all.

The BBC recently reported on research that shows that people in love can lower their levels of pain.

Love hurts, at least according to many a romantic songwriter, but it may also help ease pain, US scientists suggest.

Brain scans suggest many of the areas normally involved in pain response are also activated by amorous thoughts.

Stanford University researchers gave 15 students mild doses of pain, while checking if they were distracted by gazing at photos of their beloved.

Later on it that BBC item, it reads thus:

Professor Paul Gilbert, a neuropsychologist from the University of Derby, said that the relationship between emotional states and the perception of pain was clear.

He said: “One example is a footballer who has suffered quite a painful injury, but who is able to continue playing because of his emotionally charged state.”

He added that while the effect noticed by the Stanford researchers might only be short-lived in the early stages of a love affair, it may well be replaced by something similar later in a relationship, with a sense of comfort and wellbeing generating the release of endorphins.

“It’s important to recognise that people who feel alone and depressed may have very low pain thresholds, whereas the reverse can be true for people who feel secure and cared for.

Prof Gilbert states on his web page that “After years of exploring the processes underpinning shame and its role in a variety of psychopathologies,

my current research is exploring the neurophysiology and therapeutic effectiveness of compassion focused therapy.” (My italics.)

The old adage that you can’t love another if you don’t love yourself is based on very high levels of awareness. So the starting point to gaining the power of love is self-awareness. Here’s something from MIND:

Good mental health isn’t something you have, but something you do. To be mentally healthy you must value and accept yourself. This means that:

You care about yourself and you care for yourself. You love yourself, not hate yourself. You look after your physical health – eat well, sleep well, exercise and enjoy yourself.

You see yourself as being a valuable person in your own right. You don’t have to earn the right to exist. You exist, so you have the right to exist.

You judge yourself on reasonable standards. You don’t set yourself impossible goals, such as ‘I have to be perfect in everything I do’, and then punish yourself when you don’t reach those goals.

Finally, back to romantic love. The most glorious feeling in the world.

Again expressed so beautifully by Rumi: “The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”

Some things are timeless.

By Paul Handover

A Devon Walk

Celebrating the beautiful Planet Earth and a stream running through a field

Today is Blog Action Day and the theme is water. It seemed a worthwhile cause so Learning from Dogs has joined the many thousands of Bloggers ‘speaking’ to millions of combined readers.

I have no idea what aspects of water will be covered by all those many authors but Blog Action Day sets the theme thus:

Why Water?

Right now, almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s one in eight of us who are subject to preventable disease and even death because of something that many of us take for granted.

Access to clean water is not just a human rights issue. It’s an environmental issue. An animal welfare issue. A sustainability issue. Water is a global issue, and it affects all of us.

Sign the Petition

I’m staying over in SW England at present with friends who live in a beautiful part of the County of Devon and that means plenty of lovely walks. Just a few days ago, the setting sun was glorious across the green rolling hills that are so typical of South Devon.

But this day is about water. That bountiful gift from a wonderful planet perfectly positioned from our Sun.

Water. The essence of life.

By Paul Handover

Ricochet – a P.S.

Ricochet writes to Learning from Dogs!

Yesterday, Learning from Dogs published a Post about Ricochet, the surfing dog.

I was delighted to receive a ‘reply’ from this wonderful canine which is reproduced in full here.

Thank you for posting about my work. It really helps raise awareness of my causes, and I appreciate it!

Here is the latest video of me & little Ian with the brain injury. He experienced a huge milestone in this video, during the session. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iIv5t2qKL4

[See below, Ed.]

Please join me on Facebook… it’s updated several times a day!http://www.facebook.com/SurfDogRicochet

Thanks again!

Ricochet

Indeed, I have to offer my thanks for the reply from Ricochet because my travels over the last few days made it impossible to keep the Blog posts running. This reply, turned into a Post, prevented a day being missed which, if it would have happened, would have been the first missed day since the Blog started on July 15th, 2009!

By Paul Handover

Real healing power

Ricochet – just another healing dog!

This story has spread far and wide but, nonetheless, deserves a Post on Learning from Dogs because it is the essence of what dogs offer the world – unconditional love.

To gain the trust of a dog and enter the special relationship that humans have with dogs is to understand the significance of taking people at their face value and expect nothing in return, as dogs do.

Ricochet was born as a service dog and entered into the appropriate training. But there was a hic-cup in her learning, fortuitous as it happened and …. no, that’s enough from me. Watch it yourself ….

Now take a few minutes and understand what Ricochet and Ian McFarland demonstrated to the world.

and here’s Ricochet website.

and, well … just think what the world would be like if we all understood the power of love!

By Paul Handover

CASSE

The Center for the Advancement of Steady State Economy

My post published a short while ago contained a contribution from Carla. This, in part, is what she said:

We have to try to work constructively for change. I keep urging people to check out the potential for an economy based not on constant growth, which is impossible on a finite planet, but on some sane principles of equity and sustainability.

If you go to http://www.steadystate.org and look at their position statement, you can see that people from all over the world are signing on–yes, just three or four people a day–but they are from every continent and just about every country.

Now, can you help this “go viral”?

I spent sufficiently long at the CASSE website to be comfortable that it is well worth supporting. Here are the members of the Executive Board. Here are the staff and here are their advisors. Here’s their Mission:

The mission of CASSE is to advance the steady state economy, with stabilized population and consumption, as a policy goal with widespread public support. We pursue this mission by:

educating citizens, organizations, and policy makers on the conflict between economic growth and (1) environmental protection, (2) ecological and economic sustainability, and (3) national security and international stability;

promoting the steady state economy as a desirable alternative to economic growth;

studying the means to establish a steady state economy.

Even if you don’t want to make a financial subscription to CASSE you can still register your support. Here is their Position Statement:

The CASSE position sets the record straight on the conflict between economic growth and environmental protection. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution are just three powerful examples. And how will the next generation find jobs when the planet can’t support our overgrown economy? The CASSE position calls for a desirable solution – a steady state economy with stabilized population and consumption – beginning in the wealthiest nations and not with extremist tactics. Join the likes of E. O. Wilson, Jane Goodall, and David Suzuki; fill in the information below to sign the position and support a healthy, sustainable economy.

Go for it. After all, one of the definitions of madness is to continue doing the same thing and expect a different result.

By Paul Handover

S’shhh

Spend more time doing ….. well, nothing!

A couple of things happened today (written on the 2nd) that reminded me, once again, of the number one lesson that we can learn from dogs, that of quietly and peacefully enjoying now!

The first was a call with a close family member who has been over-stressed for months with a very sick father and juggling very demanding work pressures. R. took a couple of days off, 5 weeks ago, and immediately went down with a severe case of gastric flu, putting her to bed for 4 weeks!

See how her body demanded some ‘peace‘ as soon as it could get a wedge into her otherwise manic life!

Then later on I was trawling a few web sites and came back to Zen Habits, a beautiful Blog published by Leo Babauta. His latest Post was called simply

find stillness to cure the illness

Precisely!

Leo starts thus:

It’s a busy day, and you’re inundated by non-stop emails, text messages, phone calls, instant message requests, notifications, interruptions of all kinds.

The noise of the world is a dull roar that pervades every second of your life. It’s a rush of activity, a drain on your energy, a pull on your attention, until you no longer have the energy to pay attention or take action.

It’s an illness, this noise, this rush. It can literally make us sick. We become stressed, depressed, fat, burnt out, slain by the slings and arrows of technology.

The cure is simple: it’s stillness.

Now go and read the full article, not for Leo’s sake, nor for my sake. No, read it for your own sake.

And with no apologies to those regular readers of Learning from Dogs, who will have seen this picture before, look deep into this face below.

This is really how to do S’shhh! Go on, try it!

By Paul Handover

Feeling whole, like a dog!

A Guest Post from Daniela Caride. Daniela writes the Blog The Daily Tail

Something about being a dog dazzles me. Maybe it’s the freedom. Dogs don’t care what others think of them. They do whatever pleases them most without guilt or worries.

This morning, it became so clear to me. My walk around Fresh Pond Reservation in Cambridge didn’t feel very pleasant. I was worried about my mother’s persistent headache.

Today promised to be the hottest day of the summer, and the heat was not helping my mood. It was only 9 a.m., and I was already convinced something had changed in our constellation, and the sun was about to barbeque the Earth.

But my dogs, Frieda, Geppetto and Lola, were oblivious to anything going on outside Fresh Pond. They trotted happily to the doggie pond awaiting them less than a mile away, stopping only to sniff around and greet other dogs.

At the pond, they refreshed themselves in the water, not minding that the water gets dirtier as the summer wears on. They love that stinky pond, from the day the ice starts cracking and we can finally see our reflections in the moving water, to the beginning of winter when the water turns into ice again.

We completed our lap and approached my car, parked in front of a huge grassy area, where dogs are not allowed. One

of the landscaping employees was testing the park’s brand new lawn sprinklers. He turned them on and watched as half a dozen sprinklers soaked the grass.

Geppetto ran toward the spinning sprinklers, ignoring leash laws, of course. He was dying for a sip. The water flowed so strong that Geppetto had to close his eyes when trying to get the spray into his mouth again and again.

Frieda and Lola followed him, first exploring the artificial rain until they felt comfortable enough to play beneath it. Soon they were romping under the sun without feeling the effects of the boiling heat.

I watched the beauty of that canine dance with envy. My dogs were free, living the moment, unfettered of any concern. Then I asked myself why we humans don’t act more like them, especially in situations like this, in which no harm would be done.

geppetto and daniela — Geppetto and Daniela

First, I went into one of the sprinklers, wetting my hair and face. Then another sprinkler surprised me, showering me head to toe with a refreshing jet. I raised my arms to let the water reach the rest of my body.

Park regulars watched their dogs and me from careful distance, not wanting to get wet. I didn’t care any more. I felt whole.

Whole like a dog.

By Daniela Caride

A very beautiful friendship

Foreword by Jon

Although I have only seen a trailer for this film, I watched the interviews and excerpts Paul has linked in this article and found them very moving.

In these days of uncertainty and fear it is heartening to see and read about a relationship founded on unconditional love.

It signifies to me that it is the quality of our relationships that makes the difference in life, not material possessions – and then how we go about finding more examples of these in our everyday lives.

Jon Lavin

This is all about Trust

The prompt for writing this particular Post was the other evening Jean and I watched the film The Soloist. I’ll come on to that later.

Before I do, I want to look at another aspect of learning from dogs; that is the question of trust. We have so much to learn from dogs with regard to trust.

Because dogs spend so much of their time living in the present, just being a dog in the ‘now’ moment as it were, they seem to be able to read another dog very quickly. Dogs don’t have ‘hidden agendas’.

You see we humans can be (and should be) as happy in the present as dogs are. But so often our fears, worries and concerns for the future hinder our ability to experience the present, to enjoy the NOW.

Look at the faces of others around you when you have a moment. (Or, indeed look at your own right now in the mirror.) Do you see a face serenely happy unencumbered with the past or the future? Rarely is my guess.

That’s why a dog can read another dog in micro-seconds and know everything about that other animal. There are no secrets – what you see is what you get.

Look at this picture.

This is Poppy (8 lbs/3.5 kg) picking up food droppings from Pharaoh (90 lbs/40 kg). In fact, within seconds of taking this picture, Poppy had pushed between Pharaoh’s front legs and put her face in the dish and started eating Pharaoh’s food, at which point Pharaoh went over the Poppy’s dish and started eating from there. (NB. Anyone that has dogs in their home will know how possessive they can be at feeding time.)

Immediately when Pharaoh met Poppy, when he and I ended up in Mexico in 2008, they instantly trusted each other. This is a beta level (second in status to the alpha, i.e. dominant) pure bred German Shepherd bonding with a Yorkie mix female dog that was found, hairless and starving, on a Mexican construction site – rescued by Jean after almost certainly being thrown out after she had made some Mexican a few pesos from selling her puppies.

Here’s another picture of these two:

Jamie-Foxx-and-Robert-Dow — Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr in The Soloist

Now to the film. It wasn’t a blockbuster and didn’t get rave reviews but if viewed from the simple perspective of trust and friendship it delivers a powerful message that is beautifully compelling.

There’s an official trailer on YouTube here but the better review is this extract from the 60 Minutes programme below.

You need to watch this film to see how trust is built up, and out of that trust comes a wonderful friendship. But you will get a taste of the sheer beauty of this true story by this 12 minute YouTube video. Try and put aside these few minutes so you can watch this without interruption.

And here’s a link to another extract from the 60 Minutes programme concentrating on Mr Ayers playing his heart out.

If you want to read the column in the LA Times that Steve Lopez wrote in December 2004 about Mr Ayer’s Christmas present, just click here.

Finally, the film closes with these words from the actor who portrays Mr Lopez. Please read them to yourself, aloud if you can.

Points West by Steve Lopez

A year ago I met a man who was down on his luck and thought that I might be able to help him. I don’t know that I have. Yes, my friend Mr. Ayers now sleeps inside. He has a key, he has a bed, but his mental state and his well-being are as precarious now as they were the day we met.

There are people who tell me that I helped him, mental health experts who say that the simple act of being someone’s friend can change the brain chemistry, improve his functioning in the world.

I can’t speak for Mr Ayers in that regard, maybe our friendship has helped him, but maybe not.

I can however speak for myself. I can tell you that by witnessing Mr Ayers’ courage, his finality, his faith in the power of his art, I’ve earned the dignity of being loyal to something you believe in, holding on to him. Above all else, I believe him, without question that it will carry you home.

And now recall that when you were reading those words, you were totally and completely living in the present. Keep that feeling of grace close to you forever.

By living in the present, you offer yourself as a friend to the world.

By Paul Handover

Living in the present

What do you think of it so far?

The above is a popular catchphrase. It suggests that how we view something now is the product of all our experiences to date. It might apply to a book, play, TV programme or life itself.

But the truth may be very different, how we view the present moment may be more to do with shutting off all those previous experiences and just accepting the present as if we have been blind, dumb and deaf until this perfect moment of now.

That’s why what we have to learn from dogs is so important even though that ‘lesson’ may be just this single, very, very important aspect. Living in the now!

Here’s what is written on our Home Page post:

Dogs have so much to teach us. To an extent that’s difficult for humans to contemplate, they live in the present. Dogs just are!

They make the best of each moment uncluttered by the sorts of complex fears and feelings that we humans have.

Living in the present is not easy. Trust me, I’m only starting to practice this myself and maintaining a few seconds is a challenge!

But try it. Just let everything in your mind be replaced, just for a few moments, by NOW. That’s the sound of your breath woven into the sound of everything going on around you. Let all of those sounds just be a part of your awareness.

Be aware of touch. Feel what you are sitting on standing on. Feel the messages your fingers and hands are sending to your nervous system. Feel the bench, chair, ground or whatever is connecting your body in a physical sense to the world around you.

Hold a rock, a plant, a branch, anything real and be totally aware of the texture and feel of that object.

Smell the aromas entering your nose – just be aware of them.

And see with your eyes. Really see. See through your eyes with the innocence of eyes first opened.

Just hold this place of divine grace for a few moments.

You have just experienced true peace and your world will never be quite the same again.

Oh, how I envy dogs!

By Paul Handover

What do we mean by good mental health?

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