Reasons You Need to be Touched – 90 Days, Self Improvement by Tracy O Connor
Do you ever feel like you’re living in a bubble, surrounded by people but never touched? We live in such a busy, crowded world, yet it’s so easy to many of us to go days, even weeks or months without being touched by others.
While you might not notice the effects of not being touched right away, it can negatively affect your mood, your confidence and your health. We are only beginning to understand the holistic way our bodies work and the relationship between our emotional well being and our physical health.
Here are 6 reasons why you need to be touched on a regular basis.
1. Feel connected to others.We are social beings, and although we all fall in different places on the introversion – extroversion scale, we all need to have that sense of connection to other members of our tribe. While some of that connection can come from having conversations with others, touch also plays an important role in human communication.
2. Reduce anxiety. Simply touching another person can make us feel more secure and less anxious. It can make us feel grounded and safe and not so all alone. It’s not just children who could use a warm, reassuring hug to make things alittle better, so if you’re feeling like a bundle of nerves, go ahead and ask for a hug.
3. Bonding. Touch is one of the ways romantic partners bond with each other and parents bond with their children. When partners and families get busy and let touch go out the window, they’ll often find that they don’t feel as close and relationships suffer. Regular touch is one of the ways that we continually renew our bonds with those we love.
4. Lowers your blood pressure. Studies have shown that those that get regular touch often have lower blood pressure that those that don’t Even having a pet can have beneficial effects! Touch can also slow the heart rate and help speed recovery times from illness and surgery.
5. Improve your outlook. It’s hard to get into a pessimistic funk when you feel the confidence of being connect to others. Touch can make people feel more optimistic and positive and less cynical and suspicious. A positive, trusting attitude towards others can reduce tension in our daily lives and improve our relationships.
6. Give us the sensory input that we crave. Scientists are just discovering how truly important it is to exercise all our physical senses for proper brain and emotional development. All the various kinds of touch from butterfly kisses to deep tissue massage send our brain the physical inputs it needs to make sense of the world. So, along with touching other people and pets, make time to explore different textures and touch sensations such as letting cool sand run through your fingers or taking a warm relaxing bath.
Don’t let yourself get too busy that you starve yourself of touch. It’s important for your physical, mental and emotional well being to touch others and let others touch you.
The Happiness Lifestyle – I Want To Be Happier Right Now! by Jackie Wells Smith
Most people think of happiness as an emotional state like joy, excitement or loving feelings, but happiness is more than feeling good. The positive emotions normally associated with happiness are actually he end result of becoming a happier person. Lasting happiness is a lifestyle choice. It’s a set of skills that can be learned and applied in your own life.
Many people assume that happiness is getting the things they want like recognition, nice possessions or love. All of those things, as wonderful as they can be, are not happiness. Happiness is the starting place for getting the Happiness Lifestyle things you want from life. It begins by knowing who you are and what you want and need. If you are feeling happy for a reason, it’s probably not true happiness, but a temporary emotional
state.
What the happiest people have in common is not cars or money or good looks; they have a mindset, or an attitude, for approaching life. This happiness mindset is a way of thinking about yourself and your life that attracts the kind of good feelings and positive results most people crave. The happiest people remain open to life. They’re not single-minded in their pursuit of a goal or object, believing this one thing will make them happy.
This happiness mindset can be learned, but it does take some time and attention. Like any skill, it must be practiced. The more you practice the skills of the happiness mindset, the more enjoyment, success and love you have in your life.
But what about right now? What if you need a little infusion of happiness today? Well, there are things you can do today – this very moment – that will immediately increase your feeling of well being.
1. Log off Facebook and phone a friend
2. Focus on People and on things
3. Go outside and get vitamin D
4. Think happy thoughts – listening to happy music
5. Get more sleep
6. Give back socially – make a donation
7. Skip the fast food
The Stress Factor – Your Body Speaks Your Mind by Deb Shapiro
Imagine you are trying to squeeze some toothpaste out of a tube but you have forgotten to take the top off (or to flip the lid!) What happens? The toothpaste has to find some other way out. This usually means that it will come out of the bottom of the tube or perhaps force a hole in side – whatever or where is the weakest point.
Now imagine that the tube of toothpaste is you. You are under pressure and beginning to experience psychological or emotional stress. But you do not take you lid off, as it were, by recognizing what is happening and taking time to relax or deal with your inner conflicts. So what happens to the mental or emotional pressure building up inside you? Eventually it has to find a way out, and if it can’t come out through he top (by being expressed and resolved), it will come out somewhere else. It will find the weakest point – whether through your digestive system, your nerves, your immune system, or your sleep patterns. Pushed down it becomes illness, depression, addiction, or anxiety; projected outward it becomes hostility, aggression, prejudice, or fear.
The clearest way to see how the mind directly affects the body is through stress. The cerebral cortex in the brain sounds the alarm whenever there is a form of perceived life-threatening or stressful activity. For instance, try remembering a gruesome scene from a movie, and you will feel the muscles in your back, shoulders, or stomach contract. The images are just in your mind, yet they trigger an instant response in your body.
Commit to Now – What About Now? Reminders for Being in the Moment by Gina Lake
The ego doesn’t want to commit to anything – a place, a relationship, a career – because it believes that something better may be possible, and it is willing to forgo what is present for the possibility of something better
that isn’t present. Essence, on the other hand, is committed to whatever is. It doesn’t commit into the future because all that exists is the present, so it commits itself to that. That is the essential difference between the ego and Essence. The ego dreams and something better in the midst of whatever is, while Essence simply enjoys and commits attention and love to whatever is. In fact, the committing attention to anything that is present results in enjoyment. the ego enjoys so little because it commits attention what isn’t present and to what it doesn’t have, and suffers over that, instead of committing attention to whatever is. It loves its fantasies, dreams, and desires more than it loves reality.
Inspiration Corner
“Realize deeply that the present moment is all your ever have.” – Eckart Tolle –
“There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.” – Richard Rorty
“Things do not change; we change.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.” – Rumi
TIME FOR SELF NEWSLETTER contributed by:
Heather Young, owner of Time for Self
Registered Massage Therapist (RMT) / Yuen Method™/ Holistic Practitioner
Certified Personal Transformation Coach / Alternative and Energetic Medicines
403-358-2362 — Red Deer, Alberta, Canada
