This is about breathing and is something I know about. Because Bruce at our local ClubNorthwest has a session with me when I spend five minutes or so taking in through the nose the deepest breath that I can.
If you have not registered with the BBC then you will need to do so before the link at the bottom works.
In Episode 4 – Air – we visit an infant school in Nottingham where young children regularly learn breathing techniques to reduce stress and anxiety. We also hear about research from Italy showing how slowing our breathing impacts positively on brain activity. Plus breath coach and founder of School Breathe, Aimee Hartley, shares her experience of learning to breathe well.
Produced and Presented by Helen Needham Research by Anna Miles and Maud Start Original Music by Anthony Cowie Mixed by Ron McCaskill and Malcolm Torrie
A BBC Scotland Production made in Aberdeen for BBC Radio 4
Continuing this fascinating series from BBC Radio 4.
Last week the BBC chose to present a programme called An Almanac for Anxiety. There were five episodes: Fire; Wood: Water: Air; Earth.
If you have not registered with the BBC then you will need to do so before the link below works.
The details of each episode were presented on the BBC website:
In Episode 3 – Water – we join a group of socially prescribed outdoor swimmers on Teignmouth Beach in Devon who find joy in immersing themselves in cold water. We also hear why spending time around blue spaces is so effective at promoting a sense of calm from Dr Catherine Kelly of the University of Brighton.
Produced and Presented by Helen Needham Research by Anna Miles and Maud Start Original Music by Anthony Cowie Mixed by Ron McCaskill and Malcolm Torrie
A BBC Scotland Production made in Aberdeen for BBC Radio 4
Last week the BBC chose to present a programme called An Almanac for Anxiety. There were five episodes: Fire; Wood: Water: Air; Earth.
If you have not registered with the BBC then you will need to do so before the link below works.
The details of each episode were presented on the BBC website:
Anxiety is the most common form of mental illness in the UK, with nearly a fifth of people experiencing it over the course of a year. Although it is often treated through medication, there are many alternative ways which are proving to be very effective in reducing anxiety amongst some people. In this series, we explore how connecting with the elemental forces of nature helps people with a range of mental illnesses to feel better. We also learn about the current academic research behind these methods.
In Episode 1 – Fire – we visit an overnight camp on the banks of the River Spey near Aviemore in the Scottish Highlands run by the charity Fire and Peace. According to the participants, – who have a range of mental ill health and addiction issues – the experience of spending time around the fire in nature is transformative when it comes to promoting feelings of connection and wellbeing. We also hear new research which shows how being around a campfire can be calming.
BBC Radio 4
I am going to share the link to the BBC each day this week with a new episode each day. The programmes are 15 minutes long and in my opinion well worth listening to.
Now above we were told: ‘Anxiety is the most common form of mental illness in the UK’ but of course we all know that anxiety affects many millions across the world. That is why I intend to share with you all five programmes.
Republishing a recent article published by The Conversation.
Before I go to this article I want to talk briefly about the book the Myth of Normal or as the subtitle explains TRAUMA, ILLNESS & HEALING IN A TOXIC CULTURE.
Let me pick this closing paragraph of Chapter 20, on page 296:
Disconnection in all its guises – alienation, loneliness, loss of meaning and dislocation – is becoming our culture’s most plentiful product. No wonder we are more addicted, chronically ill, and mentally disordered than ever before, enfeebled as we are by such malnourishment of mind, body, and soul.
the Myth of Normal, Dr Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté
It is a very powerful book albeit not the easiest read in the world but still highly recommended.
Plus there is a YouTube video of Dr. Maté being interviewed in July, 2023 by Tara Westover (also a long video!).
Now to the main purpose of today’s post.
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Keeping your cool in a warming world: 8 steps to help manage eco-anxiety
But amid doom-and-gloom predictions, there is hope. As a therapist and clinical social work professor, I have seen firsthand how paralyzing eco-anxiety can be, and I’m dedicated to finding solutions. Here are a few evidence-based tips to tackle your climate woes.
Caring about the world you live in does not make you a “crazy” alarmist. In fact, growing numbers of people across the globe feel the same way, with two-thirds of Americans reporting being at least somewhat worried about climate change in recent polls.
It makes sense that people would feel nervous when basic needs like safety and shelter are threatened. Give yourself grace, because beating yourself up for these very valid feelings will only make you feel worse.
Participate in the solution
It can be hard to feel empowered when environmental harms are taking a toll on your mental health, but the escalating global crisis still demands urgent attention. Instead of burying your head in the sand, use that mental discomfort as a catalyst for action.
Individual efforts to reduce your carbon footprint matter. Joining larger movements has the potential for even move significant impacts, as well as the potential to buffer anxiety, research shows. Volunteer your own unique passions, talents and skills to advocate for systemic changes that will benefit the planet and humanity.
When you feel anxious, use that energy as fuel for the fight. Harnessing eco-anxiety in this way can reduce your sense of powerlessness.
As a therapist, I often help clients identify and reframe unhelpful thinking patterns. For example, while it is true that there are many environmental problems to grapple with, there is also positive news, so don’t discount it. Recognize and celebrate victories big and small.
Trauma: Process it so you can heal
The climate crisis has been conceptualized as a collective trauma, and many individuals are struggling with eco-grief from climate impacts that have already happened. Processing past trauma from events like weather disasters is a crucial step in enhancing your ability to cope with new experiences.
Even people who have not yet experienced significant climate impacts directly may have signs of pre-traumatic stress, a clinical term for the distress experienced in anticipation of a high-stress situation. A licensed mental health professional can help you process these emotions.
Reduce isolation
It’s no secret that having a strong social support network is a key ingredient for happiness. Surrounding yourself with compassionate, like-minded friends is also key to sustained efforts in doing your part to make a difference.
Consider joining or starting a Climate Cafe or similar group to talk about climate concerns. Visit a 10-step climate grief meeting. Join a local environmental organization. Or simply call up a friend when you need a listening ear.
Go for a quiet walk in the woods and observe nature all around you – it’s a Japanese practice for relaxation known as forest bathing. Spend time gardening. Exercise outdoors or otherwise spend time outdoors in a place that is relaxing and restorative for you.
Self-care is paramount when it comes to managing the emotional toll of eco-anxiety.
Engaging in self-care practices, such as getting adequate sleep, eating healthy and having fun, helps us maintain a sense of balance in the face of overwhelming environmental concerns.
Remember what they teach you on airplanes – you should always put on your own oxygen mask before helping other passengers. Likewise, when we come from a place of wellness, we are better equipped to handle the stresses of eco-anxiety and make a difference in this area.
Mindfulness
Because eco-grief is focused on the past and eco-anxiety is future-oriented, reconnecting to the present moment is a powerful way to combat both.
By cultivating mindfulness – a nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment – people can become more attuned to their thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations in response to eco-anxiety triggers. This heightened self-awareness helps people to acknowledge worries without becoming consumed by them.
In the face of eco-anxiety, these strategies can build resilience, reminding everyone that they have the power to shape a more sustainable and hopeful future.
There’s a powerful reminder that we have the power to stay in the present, or to put it another way by cultivating mindfulness. There are quite a few websites on Mindfulness including this description of what Mindfulness is on the Mayo Clinic website.
Mindfulness is a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you’re sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment. Practicing mindfulness involves breathing methods, guided imagery, and other practices to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress.
Mayo Clinic
Now that is something I should really focus on as I am terrible at being in the moment and nowhere else.
I would not have believed this had I not read it with my own eyes.
I have been an atheist all my life. My mother and father were all those years ago when being an atheist was not something one promoted.
But a recent article from The Conversation told a very surprising account: “These spiritual caregivers can be found working in hospitals, universities, prisons and many other secular settings, serving people of all faiths and those with no faith tradition at all.“
Here’s the full article.
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Religious leaders without religion: How humanist, atheist and spiritual-but-not-religious chaplains tend to patients’ needs
Chaplains talk with anyone, regardless of whether or not the patient has a religious affiliation – and some chaplains themselves are not religious. Jacob Wackerhausen/iStock via Getty Images Plus
In times of loss, change or other challenges, chaplains can listen, provide comfort and discuss spiritual needs. These spiritual caregivers can be found working in hospitals, universities, prisons and many other secular settings, serving people of all faiths and those with no faith tradition at all.
Yet a common assumption is that chaplains themselves must be grounded in a religious tradition. After all, how can you be a religious leader without religion?
Thirty percent of Americans are religiously unaffiliated. Research suggests that people who are atheists or otherwise nonreligious sometimes reject a chaplain out of wariness, or shut down a conversation if they feel judged for their beliefs. But this research has not accounted for a new, increasingly likely situation – that the chaplain might also be nonreligious.
No national survey has been done, so the number of nonreligious chaplains is unknown. But there is plenty of reason to think that as more Americans choose not to affiliate with any particular religion, so too do more chaplains.
Nonreligious chaplains have been a part of hospital systems and universities for years, but they came into the national spotlight in August 2021 when Harvard University’s organization of chaplains unanimously elected humanist and atheist Greg Epstein as president. Humanists believe in the potential and goodness of human beings without reference to the supernatural.
Other recent reporting on humanist chaplains has also focused on school campuses, but nonreligious chaplains are not limited to colleges and universities. Eighteen of the 21 nonreligious chaplains we spoke with in our study work in health care, including hospice. The Federal Bureau of Prisons allows nonreligious chaplains, but we were unable to find any of them to participate in the current study.
Humanist chaplain Bart Campolo, center, and his wife, Marty, right, mingle with students at the University of Southern California in 2015. AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
The idea of a “call” from God is central to many religious vocations: a strong impulse toward religious leadership, which many people attribute to the divine.
Chaplains who are atheists, agnostics, humanists or who consider themselves spiritual but not religious also can feel called. But they do not believe that their calls come from a deity.
Joe, for example, an atheist and a humanist whom we interviewed, has worked as a chaplain in hospitals and hospices. He says that his “light bulb moment” came after a history professor told him that beliefs are the source of a community’s power. While atheists do not believe in God or gods, many do have strong beliefs about ethics and morality, and American atheists are more likely than American Christians to say they often feel a sense of wonder about the universe. Joe’s call was not “from a divine source,” but nonetheless, he says this experience “kind of filled me with a sense of control, and confidence, and presence” in his life that grounded his sense of a calling.
Sunil, another chaplain our team interviewed, was inspired by his college chaplain, whom he calls “a really influential presence.” The chaplain helped Sunil answer questions about identity and values without “necessarily having any religious or spiritual leanings to it,” and encouraged him to go to divinity school.
Today, Sunil tries to help others answer those same questions in his work as a health care chaplain – and to offer deeply thoughtful, meaningful spiritual care to people who aren’t religious.
Education and training
Most chaplaincy jobs require a theological degree. Along with coursework in sacred scriptures and religious leadership, chaplaincy training usually involves clinical pastoral education, where students learn about hands-on, care-oriented aspects of their profession. This involves learning to provide care to everyone, regardless of their religious background.
Although coursework is broadly the same for all students, religious or nonreligious, the actual experience of earning a degree is very different for nonreligious students. In the United States, Christian students are easily able to enroll in a seminary or divinity school that shares their faith identity and spend their years of study learning about their own tradition.
Chaplaincy programs that focus on non-Christian traditions are available, but scarcer, and our team does not know of an overtly nonreligious chaplaincy program. In recent years, more seminaries have welcomed nonreligious students, but nonetheless, nonreligious students often find themselves focusing their study on traditions to which they have no personal connection.
Yet there is a surprising bright side.
‘I am here to support you’
Being deeply immersed in traditions that are not one’s own is one of the reasons that nonreligious chaplains can be so effective.
Artwork posted by a chaplain in a break room in the trauma surgery ICU at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. David Ryder/Getty Images
For example, our team asked Kathy, a health care chaplain, how she approaches prayer with religious and nonreligious patients. “My goal is to try to meet that person where they are and pray in a way that’s helpful and comforting for them, or meets whatever the need is that’s arisen during the conversation that we’ve had,” she said. Like all chaplains, Kathy is there to accompany, not proselytize. While she herself prays to the “great mystery,” she is comfortable facilitating whatever prayer is needed.
Claire, a chaplaincy student, agreed with Kathy and described her own first experience meeting an evangelical Christian patient. It was easy, she said, because “you’re not trying to fix anything. You’re just trying to meet them where they are. So that’s it.”
Nonreligious chaplains are used to thinking outside the box. Having learned about major world religions, many of them can find overlapping values and beliefs with their patients, such as finding beauty and meaning in the natural world or finding strength in their conviction that human beings are inherently good.
Cynthia works in the palliative care department in a hospital and tells her patients, “I am here to support you in whatever is meaningful to you right now and whatever is most important in your life in this moment.” She asks patients: “What are you struggling with right now? What are your goals? What do you hope for? What are you afraid of?” – trying to “unpack that with a spiritual lens rather than a medical lens.”
Cynthia is an example of why spiritual care by nonreligious chaplains may be surprising, but is likely here to stay. Based on our research, nonreligious chaplains are as capable as religious chaplains of meeting a person in their darkest hour and taking them by the hand.
That last sentence may be opened up even more. In that the article speaks of chaplains, both religious and nonreligious. But as someone who was a counsellor with the Prince’s Youth Business Trust some years ago, now The Prince’s Trust, it is my opinion that anyone who is an active listener can undertake the role.
The article has many fine points including one that I had not considered before. “That American atheists are more likely than American Christians to say they often feel a sense of wonder about the universe.” I am certain that this isn’t confined to Americans.
Countless numbers of people have dreamt that they can communicate with animals and I would imagine an enormous percentage of those would have dreamt that they can communicate with dogs.
Certainly of the three dogs we have alive still here at home (we had in the past some fifteen dogs) Oliver below appears to understand much of what is said to him by me and Jean
If one goes to the YouTube website then one is introduced to Anna Breytenbach who has made it her life’s passion to better communicate with animals. Here’s a small piece from the extensive WikiPedia entry:
In her twenties she decided to pursue her passion for wildlife (big cats in particular) by becoming a cheetah handler at a conservation education project. On moving to America, she explored wolf and other predator conservation. She has also served on committees for wolf, snow leopard, cheetah and mountain lion conservation.
Anna Breytenbach and friend
So now we come to this video of Anna and Diablo, more properly called Spirit, (and the video will make that clear).
Arjan Postma explains the background to the film:
I just want to share this message as much as possible without any commercial intent, personal benefit or whatsoever. All used materials and therefore copyrights do not belong to me. I hope you enjoy discovering and watching this story and skill as much as I did: What if you could talk to animals and have them talk back to you? Anna Breytenbach has dedicated her life to what she calls interspecies communication. She sends detailed messages to animals through pictures and thoughts. She then receives messages of remarkable clarity back from the animals. In this section, Anna transforms a deadly snarling leopard into a relaxed content cat. The amazing story of how leopard Diabolo became Spirit… I found the source of this amazing documentary here: http://www.cultureunplugged.com/docum… This is the first full length documentary film on the art of animal communication. Nominated for Best Long Documentary, Best Director of “Jade Kunlun” Awards of 2012 World Mountain Documentary Festival of Qinghai China. Director: Craig Foster | Producer: Vyv Simson | Narrator: Swati Thiyagarajan Genre: Documentary | Produced In: 2012.
First, let me will quote from the text that comes with the YouTube video.
This is the remarkable story of Zeus, who was effectively paralyzed at the time he was rescued from a high-kill animal shelter in Oklahoma by the wonderful people at St. Francis CARE in Murphysboro, Illinois.
Video edited and produced by Jason Greene
Next, this unmissable video confirms what so many now already: Dogs are stars in their own world.
There you go! A short, little post for today but one that highlights the power of dogs! They are incredible!
When Maile Trist checked her email last week, she opened up a message she assumed was a prank. Her beloved dog, a senior Chihuahua named Jazzy, was at the Cowley County Humane Society after being found wandering around a nearby rock quarry.
The email didn’t make sense to Trist because Jazzy had passed away two years ago.
When Trist first met Jazzy at San Diego Humane Society four years ago, she ignored the “Do not pet” sign on her cage. Somehow she knew they’d have a connection.
“I came across my gorgeous girl, I stuck my hand in the cage, and she automatically walked right up to me, tail wagging, and put her head in my hand,” Trist told The Dodo. “I started crying because I had found my dog!”
Two years passed, and Trist moved from California to Kansas. Overwhelmed with the move and a new full-time job, she felt she didn’t have enough time to give to Jazzy. So she asked a dog-loving couple she was friendly with to watch her pup until she got settled.
However, when Trist tried to get back in touch with the couple, they ignored her calls and deleted their social media accounts. She couldn’t find them anywhere. Then, six months later, Trist’s fiancé managed to track them down and asked for Jazzy back.
“The lady told him she had died three months prior,” Trist said. “About a year and half went by, and lots and lots of grieving. I felt horrible for ever giving her to them because I thought I wasn’t there for her last moments.”
Trist thought she’d never see her beloved dog again, but luckily, Jazzy had a microchip. And when she got the news that Jazzy had been located, she dropped everything to be with her dog again.
“I automatically headed home from my job and got in the car and headed to her,” Trist said. “I was crying on and off the whole way there, which was almost a three-hour drive. I couldn’t believe she was still alive and I had no idea how she ended up that far away, but in those moments, I did not care.”
When Trist arrived at the shelter, and watched Jazzy walk towards her again, she couldn’t hold back her tears.
Jazzy recognized her mom immediately, and her little tail started wagging uncontrollably.
“She kind of went to sniff around, but came right back to me and gave me even more kisses,” Trist said. “She would not leave my lap or my arms the whole car ride home, either.”
Now, Jazzy is home and the little dog is not letting her mom out of her sight ever again.
“She’s been so, so happy ever since and she will not leave my side or let me go anywhere without her,” Trist said. “And I feel the same way!”
What exactly happened to the senior dog remains a mystery, but what’s important is that she’s safe and ready to spend her golden years in comfort, surrounded by her loving family.
“She’s a little more white than she was from the last time I saw her, and her hips are a little more sore,” Trist said, “but she’s still the same old lady she was before, and I’m so glad she stayed loving through these last two years.”
(All photographs by Maile Trist.)
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Yet another example of the love between people and their dogs. I would like to say that it doesn’t get any better than that but I would be wrong. It is a perfect case of unconditional love and there are hundreds and hundreds of other stories out there.
Hopefully a few of them will be featured on Learning from Dogs!
We wanted to recognise the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
So I thought that I would find some photos of the Queen’s corgis that I could share with you. Unfortunately all the photographs were copyrighted.
It is a well-known fact that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is a dog lover and has been all her long life. There is a delightful story about the Queen and her corgis on the BBC at this moment and you may like to read it. Meanwhile today’s picture parade is all Corgis!
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That’s it folks for another week.
I will close by thanking Her Majesty for all that she done over the years. Her Majesty gave her promise when she was 21 to devote her life to the Crown and all that flows from that commitment. Whatever her private thoughts have been over the years she has remained loyal to the Nation and the Commonwealth and it is an unparalleled record that will never be surpassed!
A final photograph of Queen Elizabeth II that is attributed to the author, see below, and I hope it is alright to show it.
Learning from Dogs 