Geeky wellbeing favourites: April 2023
Gratitude for furry friends and amazing holidays, plus the usual mind–body science highlights
A few weeks ago, I was having lunch with an iguana sitting next to me, giving me the very familiar please-feed-me stare. No, I haven’t replaced kitty with an iguana (I like iguanas but kitty is far far cuter) – I was lucky enough to finally go on my 3-year-postponed, long-awaited, booked-for-2020-and-pandemic-cancelled holiday to Costa Rica.
After a fairly difficult start to the year (work-related) and semi-burnout, this holiday couldn’t have been better timed. It is literally exactly what I needed: a change of scenery, sunshine and being close to nature (plus, let’s be honest, a pre-planned itinerary so I wouldn’t have to do any thinking at all).
If you’ve never been, I highly recommend it. It’s incredibly well-organised for tourists, very clean, and the nature is incredible. It creates that powerful sense of awe that I have been struggling to put into words. My practice pretty much only consisted of being present in nature and feeling grateful for the experience.
I have, in fact, been trying to work on a gratitude list every day in the past few months. Nothing special – at the end of my morning journalling, I write three things I am grateful for from the day before (more often than not, the list includes kitty).
It’s a bit of a cliche, I know, but gratitude practices have a lot of research behind them, showing improvements in mental wellbeing and happiness (see, for example, here and here). From the research it seems like it has to be an active practice rather than I general sense of gratitude, which is why I think it’s important to write a list.
Do you have a gratitude practice? Do you find it helps with your wellbeing?
3 more gratitude-related things to explore
Here is an article to read about the four habits of happ(ier) people – practicing gratitude is one of them.
Why (and how) gratitude is not the same as toxic positivity.
How about a gratitude-themed yoga nidra?
Mind–body science highlights
Not a huge amount of interesting papers this month, but here are three that caught my eye.
Does a yoga practice prevent frailty in the elderly?
Sort of. This systematic review found evidence that yoga (hatha, Iyengar or chair yoga) offered improvements in some measures of frailty compared with being inactive or just offering education. Specifically, when taking into account all the studies, they conclude improvements in gait speed (the time it takes to walk a set distance on a level surface), with some (weak) evidence of improvements in leg strength and endurance, and (even weaker) in hand grip strength. As usual, it’s hard to draw conclusions because of the quality of the research out there, but given that frailty correlates with worse outcomes in the elderly, a gentle yoga practice could be a good idea.
Yoga for mental health among the elderly
Speaking of the elderly – I thought it would be interesting to highlight a qualitative study (ie one that involves collecting and analysing a smaller amount of non-numerical data, in this case interviews). It is a little rambly, but it’s interesting to see that, during the pandemic, yoga was overwhelming a tool used to improve mental health, with some saying that at least an hour should be devoted every day to yoga and meditation.
Yoga adds benefits to physio for rehab
This study compared physio vs physio plus yoga for the rehabilitation of sports injuries (knee, shoulder or back; n=212). They found significant improvements in pain reduction and stiffness in the yoga plus physio group at 6 weeks and beyond. Note that it sounds like the yoga practice was ‘prescribed’ in a similar was to physio (ie they gave the patients specific exercised/asanas to do for a set amount of time) – it’s interesting having a quick look at which asanas were prescribed for what injury.
Highlights from the blog
Can behavioural science help me hack self-care? Interested in some tips and tricks to help you start a gratitude (or other practice)? Check out this post for some of my behavioural science insights.
Why yoga nidra makes me happy (or just less sad)? I’m always grateful for yoga nidra, and here is some cool research supporting that it does indeed helps with emotional wellbeing.
Poetry to inspire your practice. I’m also always grateful for beautiful words and poetry, have a look at this post for some suggestions.
Until next time!