Dr. Jay Kumar
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However you ultimately choose to mark and honor Thanksgiving and the upcoming Holidays, I invite you to remember their original significance–that is to give thanks and cultivate an attitude of gratitude for all the abundance in your life. In fact, researchers in neuropsychology, who study the intimate connection between the brain and emotions, state that gratitude is one of the easiest and healthiest ways to experience overall wellbeing in brain, body, and being. In the past few years, neuroscientists have now begun to recognize that gratitude and compassion are among the most powerful and healthiest of human emotions. Studies at Stanford University and other universities successfully demonstrate that embodying compassion and remembering to be grateful for what we have in life can greatly outweigh any sadness, stress, or challenges we might currently experience.
The reason why expressing gratitude has such a strong effect is its ability to connect you to other people. Generally, when you express thanks you acknowledge the actions of others. Being grateful enables you momentarily to expand your thoughts away from your own individual concerns so that you remember the joy and happiness that others provide. You can learn more about the Neuroscience of Health & Happiness here. Basically, when you experience gratitude or express compassion you hit the proverbial “pause button” in your mind. You shift away from your repetitive thoughts, your worries, and anxiety and begin to focus on authentic happiness, joy, and love. From the perspective of neuroscience, the part of your brain that fires when you give thanks is the left prefrontal cortex, a region just above your left eye that brain scans appear to correlate with feelings of love, compassion, and self-worth. In addition to boosting your emotional and psychological health, cultivating an attitude of gratitude has physical benefits. As you experience greater levels of gratitude, studies show that neurotransmitters in the brain release chemicals to stave off stress, depression, and anxiety.
One of the easiest ways that I find to generate feelings of gratitude is to make a list of all that you’re grateful for in life. Your list might include your family, spouse, partner, children, pet, or possibly even your health, the beauty of nature, and the very fact of being alive. Make copies of this list and place them by your bed, on your office desk, or on the fridge, or places where they are most visible to you. Every time you look at this list, repeat out loud to yourself one thing on your list that you are grateful for in life. Not only verbalize the statement, but truly feel it! Envision that person, place, or idea in your thoughts and connect to the emotion of gratitude and joy that accompany the memory. Like with your body, neuroscience also states that your brain is also a muscle that can be trained and developed. As you cultivate greater gratitude for what you have in life, you automatically experience a healthy attitude toward life!
As you enjoy and commemorate this Thanksgiving always remember all that you have to be grateful. Never forget that the greatest gift is actually your presence in the world. In the beautiful and timely worrds of Melody Beattie: "Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
Keep on Living Your Light® as you enjoy Thanksgiving in gratitude, abundance, joy, and wellbeing.
Dr. Jay Kumar
www.drjaykumar.com
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Why We Need Pleasure?
When we speak about passion and pleasure in neuroscience, they are not the hedonistic, excessive aspects of debauchery or gluttony that come to mind. Rather passion and pleasure in neurobiology are defined as feelings or sensations, opposite to but also closely associated with pain. Just like pain, pleasure appears also to be a biological mechanism wired into our human nervous system and brain for survival. It’s easy to understand how the human brain’s pain mechanism is essential for survival, e.g. think of the first time you accidentally placed a hand on a hot stove and quickly learned as something not to do again. You might, however, wonder how can pleasure be an evolutionary tool for survival? I’ll offer two good examples to illustrate this point–food and sex! Both eating and reproduction are essential for the survival of the human species. Neuroscientists now believe that over the course of time the human brain developed specific “reward circuits” and “pleasure centers” to associate and foster all pleasurable experiences as being joyful and beneficial for survival. Eventually, other pleasurable experiences that were not necessary for human survival, such as smelling the fragrance of a rose, watching a beautiful sunset, or hearing a piece of soothing music, would trigger these same pleasure areas in the brain. In all of these situations the brain releases a host of “feel good” neurotransmitters, endorphins and peptides that the brain ultimately associates with positive emotions and feelings. While small and regular doses of these neurochemicals in the body are now shown to be healthy, the problem arises when we experience too much or even too little of these pleasurable activities that might lead to addictive and compulsive behavior. I will explore this topic in my next piece.
How Pleasure is Healthy for the Brain and Body
My previous blog piece on Health, Stress, and Aging discussed how medical evidence shows that when you are under chronic stress, depression, and anxiety, elevated levels of cortisol and adrenaline in the body suppress your immune system, inhibit the cell’s ability to divide, and accelerate the aging process! In fact, numerous studies on the adverse effects of stress indicate that for every one year of life under chronic stress your body can age as much as six years! While that is certainly discouraging news to many, don’t worry, I have hope! By allowing yourself to experience healthy doses of pleasure in your life–whether it’s enjoying a great meal with friends, playing with your kids, walking the dog in the park, being intimate with your partner, or my personal favorite laughing to an episode of the Simpsons–you can actually lower stress, boost up the immune system, and most importantly possibly slow down the aging process. Let’s explore how!
In the growing medical field of psychoneuroimmunology, researchers explore the intimate relationship how human behavior, the brain, and body promote health and ward off disease. At the Neuroscience Research Institute at the State University of New York in 2004 Dr. George Stefano conducted experiments to show exactly how pleasure triggers the “feel-good” chemical proenkephalin, a hormone that plays an important physiological function to regulate pain perception and response to stress. Most surprising of all, the study indicates that healthy amounts of pleasure release an important antibacterial agent in the body, known as enkelytin, an opioid peptide that appears to attack bacteria and strengthen the immune system.
All Work and No Play
You’ve probably heard of the old adage that all work and no play make for a dull life. Well, it also now appears that all work and no play also make for an unhealthy and short-lived life! The notion that pleasure is not only healthy but an integral part of human behavior and survival might run counter to our long held stereotypes about the pursuit of pleasure. While the philosophical foundation of this country was established on a Puritan work ethic that viewed passion and pleasure as the sinful path to debauchery and vice, neurobiology and the growing field of social and affective neuroscience now advocate differently. Contrary to what many of you might have been taught, when you lack healthy pleasures in life, your brain experiences a “pleasure and reward deficiency,” which in turn inhibits the release of beneficial neurochemicals into the body to reduce stress, promote a strong immune system, and create overall health and wellness! So the next time someone criticizes you for “having too much fun,” just smile and know that not only is having pleasure good for the soul, it actually now turns out to crucial for your health and well-being!
As Neal Diamond Walsch eloquently states, “Give yourself abundant pleasure, that you may have abundant pleasure to give others.”
May you always be Living Your Light as you enjoy all of life’s pleasures and passions!
Dr. Jay Kumar
www.drjaykumar.com
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