There’s nothing better than a really good belly laugh, the kind that leaves you gasping for breath with tears running down your cheeks. By the time you collect yourself, your whole body is more relaxed, your mood is lighter, everything feels cleansed. You’re probably getting healthier, too.
Laughter therapies like laughter yoga and laughter meditation have been gaining popularity for the past several decades as methods of improving physical and mental well-being. The benefits of using humor as therapy seem obvious. Unlike asking people to clean up their diets or take medicines with unpleasant side effects, just about everyone is willing to yuk it up to their favorite television show or comedian.
Read MoreIf you ask the average person on the street to list “Primal emotions,” anger will be one of the first examples they offer. You understand why: It’s raw. It’s overpowering. It feels like it comes from deep down below, from somewhere instinctual. To most people, anger is the realest emotion of all because it’s so sure of itself. There’s no mistaking anger.
Though anger has a negative connotation these days, it’s there for a reason. All emotions have a purpose. If they didn’t, emotions as a physiological category wouldn’t have arisen and survived millions of years of evolution. An emotion is an adaptation to an environmental condition. Anger exists because it promotes—or promoted—a survival advantage. Those animals who felt something approximating anger outcompeted those who didn’t. That’s what it comes down to.
On the surface, anger is a self-protective adaptation. By showing anger, we display a capacity for aggressive action to those who would threaten us or our tribe—and most socially astute, reasonable people (and even many animal predators) will retreat in the majority of situations. Anger, in this way, is part of the “checks and balances” system inherent to our social contracts. It gives the other party pause to consider whether it’s really worth the trouble to encroach.
Read MorePerimenopause and menopause comes with a complex web of physical, psychological, and social symptoms.
The treatment usually prescribed by doctors, hormone therapy (HT), is controversial and not appropriate for some women. I won’t get into the HT debate here—Mark did a great job covering the pros and cons recently. Suffice it to say that HT isn’t the answer for everyone, and it’s not a panacea by any means.
Whether or not they choose to go the HT route, many women desire additional support during perimenopause and beyond. For the sake of keeping this post from becoming a novella, I’m going to focus on mind-body therapies today.
Read MoreLet me start by saying that if you’ve mastered the art of not caring what people think, congratulations. It’s a skill most people work on their whole lives. And some don’t even realize they’re side-stepping their dreams or apologetically defending their primal lifestyle until someone points it out.
Caring what other people think of us is normal. It’s a natural human response, kind of like salivating when you see a thick ribeye sizzling on the grill. We all want to be accepted (and not rejected) by our peers and loved ones, so of course we care what they think of us.
Read MoreWe all love a good success story, don’t we? Hearing how someone dropped 70 pounds. Or got super fit. Or ditched their meds. They make it look so easy. Heck, all you have to do is clear out the pantry and stock it with primal-friendly foods and you’re golden.
Except that’s not how it works for most people. Most people operate from a point of view that prevents them from seeing the results they’re working so hard to obtain. How many times have you said to yourself, “I’ll be happy once I’m wearing a smaller size.” Or “When I lose the weight, I’ll be more confident.”
In my experience, the biggest difference between folks who continually crush their goals and those who always seem to have setbacks is that goal-crushers know how to tap into the feeling of having already achieved something great before that great thing actually happens.
Read MoreNow that the world is opening back up (well… in some places), we’re eating out more, going to more parties, and returning to a “new” new normal that sometimes leaves us (or our partners) struggling to find balance. In this week’s Ask a Health Coach, Erin is here to answer your questions about all this, plus much more. Got something to ask? Post your question in the comments or in our Mark’s Daily Apple Facebook group.
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