In 2020 and 2021, a record number of people moved out of big cities. This happened for many reasons. 

Firstly, the advent of remote work has enabled more people to keep pursuing their career goals away from the city center. And, of course, the pandemic and associated risk of contagion has encouraged people to find less densely populated areas to live in. 

So, if you have always dreamed of living close to nature and always from the hectic lifestyle of the city, 2022 might be the perfect year for this lifestyle change. Find out what to expect below.  

The Healing Power of Nature

Have you ever felt calmer and more relaxed when in nature? No, it’s not just you – the healing power of nature has been documented and studied. Some of the beneficial effects of being in a natural environment include:

• Lower blood pressure
• Lower levels of cortisol – the stress hormone
• It promotes the production of cancer-fighting cells
• It helps us become more mindful and aware
• It can help relieve symptoms of stress, anxiety, and disorders such as ADHD

If you are looking to work on your health in 2022, moving to the countryside can help.

Reduces Risks of Contagion

Countryside areas and forests are not as densely populated as big cities are. In turn, the risk of being affected by Covid-19 is reduced. If you or someone in your family is struggling to cope with everything that is going on in this period, living away from the city can help.

Opportunity To Work From Home

Many people are looking for a positive fresh start in 2022. If you have always dreamed of working from home and working towards a better work-life balance for your needs, this year might be perfect. 

Indeed, thanks to the advent of remote working fuelled by the pandemic and the many hybrid work schemes offered by employers, you no longer have to compromise between finding the perfect location to live and your career. Consider transitioning to working from home and making the most of a remote lifestyle!

A Choice That Leads to a Healthy Lifestyle

Living closer to nature has endless benefits, including the availability of fresh air, sunlight, vegetation, and wildlife. However, in your new home, you might not find all the comforts you were used to, including malls, big shopping centers, or cafes and restaurants around the corner. 

Naturally, you will start to dedicate your life to looking after the garden, hiking, and exploring the surrounding areas – all activities that can improve your health and mental wellbeing!

Reduced Stress

Living in a rural area immersed in nature can be an excellent option for you to achieve your life goals, improve your wellbeing, and reduce the levels of stress deriving from a frenetic lifestyle. 

However, if you have always lived in the city center, it is important to find a house that can help you live comfortably. Indeed, if you are moving into a house that is not comfortable or not suitable for your lifestyle, you might feel a whole different kind of stress! That is why speaking to an expert real estate agent specialized in rural properties such as williampitt.com can help. 

This is a collaborative post.

Melinda

An automobile collision is a traumatic experience for everyone involved, including the ones closest to them. You might be unsure how to show your support for a friend or loved one who has gone through this. We have a few suggestions for how you may support your friend as they make their way back to good health and happiness.

Take Them To Appointments

When someone is involved in a car accident, they may be required to attend a number of appointments. It’s extremely beneficial to have a friend by your side when seeing an auto injury doctor who specializes in automobile accidents, going to the insurance agency, seeing their Car Accident Lawyers or any other case where your friend needs to leave the house. For one thing, folks who have been in a car accident may find it difficult to drive confidently (or may be unable to do so owing to injuries), and for another, your emotional support will be invaluable in this situation.

Keep Important Documents Up-to-Date

Along with accompanying your friend to their appointments, assist them in keeping track of vital paperwork. After an auto accident, insurance must be handled, and documentation from doctor’s visits may become misplaced – the last thing they want is crucial information to go missing when it’s most needed. Offer to assist your friend in keeping track of these documents by establishing a folder for the key sections and using sticky notes to keep track of what’s what.

Provide Step-by-Step Instructions

It can be tough to remember the logical next actions after being in a car accident. Remind your friend that they need to see a doctor within a set length of time if they need to see one (the Personal Injury Protection part of their auto insurance mandates they see a doctor within two weeks of the accident). Encourage them to visit a doctor that accepts PIP insurance (not all do) and to note their calendars for any additional appointments they have.

Provide A Meal

After a vehicle accident, the last thing anyone wants to do is prepare dinner, so take care of it for them. Purchase a pizza (or several, if they have a family) and prepare a salad before calling it a night. Providing a meal not only keeps them nourished but also demonstrates your genuine concern.

Continue To Be Compassionate

Last but not least, remember to be empathetic. Don’t tell them how they should feel; instead, be a listening ear. Instead of interspersing your own stories about accidents you’ve been in, tell them you’re there if they need you, and let them vent, whine, or utterly break down. Don’t pass any judgment.

It’s not easy after having an accident or knowing how you can support someone who is experiencing it. These tips should help you to help them. 

When a friend or family member is involved in an automobile accident, your assistance is crucial. You can assist them in sorting through their to-do list, transporting them to their appointments, and providing consolation when things become difficult. After a car accident, your friend will appreciate your unwavering support, so be there for them.

This is a collaborative post.

Melinda

Whether you have undergone a major procedure that’s gone wrong or you’ve been treated badly by a medical professional, the experience can cause long-lasting trauma. 

The fact is that something like this can have a big impact. This kind of experience is highly traumatic, which can mean that it has an ongoing impact and causes a lot of trauma. 

Knowing how to move past that feeling of trauma and move forward with your life is not always as easy to do as you might wish it could be. Sometimes, moving past trauma can be extremely difficult to do; often knowing where to start can be the hardest part. 

Bearing that in mind, below we have shared some tips and suggestions for how you can approach dealing with a traumatic medical experience and how you can slowly move on. 

Understand that it wasn’t your fault 

It’s extremely common for victims of medical malpractice or medical mistakes to blame themselves, but it’s important to remember that you’re not at fault. Blaming yourself is only going to make coping with the trauma that you have experienced harder. So it’s important to try and understand that whatever happened to you, it’s not your fault. You weren’t the one in charge when you were seeking medical support, a medical practitioner was in charge, and therefore in control of the care and treatment, you received. 

Seek therapeutic support 

Often, it can be hard to move past what you may have experienced – whether it was birth trauma or a negative experience while undergoing a simple procedure – but talking about what happened to you can help to make things a little easier. 

Talking, and unwrapping what happened to you, can help to make dealing with the pain from said trauma easier. It can also make gaining an understanding of why it happened to you easier to understand. It might be hard to talk at first, but over time you should find

Get compensation 

If you’ve been negatively impacted by a medical experience, it’s important to think about what options you have. You shouldn’t have to live with daily trauma and anxiety around medical care. You shouldn’t have to deal with flashbacks and fear at the thought of seeking medical advice or care. 

Sometimes, seeking medical malpractice attorneys to take on your case and get compensation for what you endured, can be the best step forward you can take. You didn’t do anything wrong, and yet you’ve been left with this negative experience – and a lot of trauma and fear most likely – so you deserve compensation. 

Moving forward from a negative medical experience might seem impossible, but the fact is that it is possible to move on. It won’t be easy – and your medical trauma may always stay with you – but it is possible to take steps to move your life forward and move on. 

This is a collaborative post.

Melinda

IDEAS.TED.COM

Jun 8, 2018 / Rebekah Barnett

Our attention gets hijacked by everything from the stress in our lives to the ding of our phones. Neuroscientist Amishi Jha shows how we can cultivate the ability to focus on what really matters.

“I think, therefore I am distracted.”

If Descartes were writing today, this is what his famous aphorism might have become. We’re living in an age of distraction, battered by our own customized waterfall of notifications, alerts, texts, videos, bingeable TV, and more. It’s not surprising our minds often feel like a jumble.

But it turns out we’re not at the mercy of our runaway minds. Amishi Jha (TED Talk: How to tame your wandering mind), an associate professor of psychology at the University of Miami and the director of contemplative neuroscience for the UMindfulness Initiative, studies the brain’s attention mechanisms, and she’s found there are specific exercises we can do to strengthen our ability to pay attention. Here, she explains how you can get your wandering mind back under control.

Our attention is fragile. Jha likens our attention to a “a flashlight you can direct to whatever you choose.” Since research indicates our mind wanders 50 percent of our waking hours, it means most of us are walking around with darting, flickering flashlights. Internal distractions — everything from job stress to a craving for alcohol — and external distractions — like a thunderstorm weather alert on our phone screen — easily disrupt our attention. Whether the interruptions are significant or silly, they are “a basic hijacking of our attentional resources away from the task at hand,” she says. This lack of attention has serious consequences for all of us, but especially for people in high-stakes fields like medicine, the military and criminal justice.

So, how do we gain control of those flickering flashlights and achieve focus? “That’s where mindfulness training comes in,” says Jha. She describes this training as a “portable brain fitness routine to keep our attention strong.” She has tested the effects of such training on subjects in high-stress groups, like athletes and military personnel. Her research has found that the attention of someone who hasn’t had mindfulness training declines when they’re under intense stress, but in people who’ve had training, their attention remains stable. What’s more, in people who regularly do mindfulness exercises, their attention actually gets better over time — even when they’re under stress. According to Jha, researchers have started to uncover other benefits associated with mindfulness, including reduced anxiety, protection from depression relapse, and improved working memory.

What is mindfulness? It’s about paying attention to the present moment with awareness and without emotional reactivity. “It doesn’t require any particular worldview or spiritual or religious belief system,” says Jha. Mindfulness training can be broken down into two major categories: focused attention and open monitoring. They’re very different, yet complementary, practices.

Focused attention exercises cultivate your brain’s ability to focus on one single object, like one’s breath. To do mindful breathing, sit in a comfortable, upright position and focus all your attention on the sensation of breathing — “for example, the coolness of air moving in and out of your nostrils or your abdomen moving in and out,” says Jha. “Focus on something that is tied to your sensory experience. When your mind wanders away from that sensation to internal mental content or an external distraction, gently return it to the breath-related object.” Don’t be surprised or disappointed if you find yourself retrieving your mind hundreds of times during a 15-minute session. Think of your brain like a puppy you’re training to walk on a leash. Gently redirect it every time it darts away.

Another focused-attention exercise is mindful walking. Notice the sensations of walking — “your feet on the ground, the wind caressing your skin, sounds in the air,” says Jha. Walking can take place either indoors or outdoors. You might find this activity easier than mindful breathing; go with whatever exercise works best for you.

One final focused-attention exercise is the body scan. Remember the idea of your attention being like a flashlight? “A body scan is essentially taking that flashlight and directing it systematically through the entire body,” Jha says. Start by focusing your attention on your toes, taking note of whatever sensations might be there. Tightness? Tingling? Warmth? Cold? Next, you can move on to the soles of the feet and the heels, then the legs, stomach, and so on, slowly moving your flashlight up your body. After you have a good grounding in focused attention practice and can keep your attention on a particular object or set of sensations for a period of time, you can move on to open monitoring.

Open monitoring helps you learn to pay attention to what’s happening around you without becoming attached to it. This practice is not about paying attention to a particular object or objects. Instead, it’s about remaining open to any experience — internal or external — that arises, and allowing it to wash over you. “You don’t process it, you don’t think about it,” Jha says. “You just notice its occurrence and allow it to dissipate.” To do this, sit in a comfortable, upright position and try to be aware of any sensations, thoughts or emotions that emerge, without holding on to them. It might help you to label what comes up by using words like “planning,” “worrying,” “judging,” “remembering.” You can do this silently or out loud. After you name it, let it go. Think of what you’re doing as like watching clouds move in the sky and observing the different shapes they make — but in this practice, you’re watching your thoughts travel through your mind. And yes, there will be times when you feel like you keep getting hooked on a particular thought or sensation and can’t seem to drop it. Says Jha, “If you find you’re so lost in thought that you can’t do the open monitoring practice, go back to doing a focused attention exercise to steady yourself again.”

People generally start to see benefits when they practice for about 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week, for around 4 weeks. “If you do more, you benefit more,” she says, “but if you do less than 12 minutes a day, we don’t really see any benefits.” If you try any of these exercises and have trouble keeping your mind still, know that that’s a common experience. Jha urges people not to feel discouraged — as with any new activity or sport, you need to practice. “The mind will wander, and that’s completely fine. It’s not about not letting the mind wander; it’s when the mind wanders, to gently return your attention,” she says.

Start small. “Begin with whatever you consider a reasonable goal and cut it in half, and make a commitment for some period of time,” says Jha. Your goal might be as simple as vowing to stop every day and take the posture of one of the practices, says Jha. Chances are, once you sit (or walk), you’ll decide to stay for a while. Whatever your initial goal, commit to that for a month — and congratulate yourself for making it! — and then gradually increase your practice time until you’re doing it for 15 minutes, 5 days a week. Finding a mindfulness community, whether virtual or in person, can help you stick to the activity. What’s most important, says Jha, is to make sure “you really support yourself to create the habit of practicing,” whether that means setting multiple reminders for yourself or finding a quiet spot and time at your home or workplace to sit.

Jha has seen the positive impact of mindfulness training on the many people she’s worked with over the years. One thing that struck her is how much the military personnel say it has improved not just their ability to work under pressure but also their home lives. Many told her that they’d struggled to be present with their families after returning from deployment. But after mindfulness training, they found they were better able to be present with their loved ones — which is something most of us would like to do, too. “This idea of being present to the people around us when we really want to be present — it often escapes us how to do this,” says Jha. By reclaiming our own attention, we can more fully connect with the people who matter to us.

To see a list of mindfulness resources from Jha, go here. To help you get started, she suggests trying the apps Insight Timer, Headspace and 10% happier. Additional resources for online and in-person mindfulness courses can be found at the Center for Healthy Minds, the Penn Program for Mindfulness, the Contemplative Sciences Center, Duke Integrative Medicine, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at UCSF, the UCSD Center for Mindfulness, the UMass Center for Mindfulness, the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center and the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Vanderbilt.

https://embed.ted.com/talks/amishi_jha_how_to_tame_your_wandering_mind

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rebekah Barnett is the community speaker coordinator at TED, and knows a good flag when she sees one.

More than any other animal, human beings suffer from mental and emotional stress – this is due to our psychological development and self-awareness. But it’s not only the mental side of things we need to look out for; our wellbeing is closely tied to our physical and emotional health as well. In this post, we take a quick look at some of the ways we can improve our overall health.

Physical Health 

Hair 

If you’re like most people, you wash your hair regularly to keep it clean and maintain a healthy outwards appearance, but washing your hair too often could be doing more harm than good. That’s because hair requires natural oil produced in the follicle glands that get washed away. 

Healthy hair is oily hair; it is not dry or brittle and should not contribute to a flaky scalp; if you find that your hair has any of these qualities, it’s time to do something about it. First, switch your hair products to chemical-free ones and consider washing your hair less regularly for more oil.  

Skin 

People spend a lot of time and money looking after their skin because it’s one of the first outward signs of wellbeing. However, all the skincare products in the world can’t help you if your skin is affected by your lifestyle or your moods; in that case, you need an alternative solution.

The good news is that skin is a responsive organ; it responds positively to diet, exercise, and natural skin care products that aim to rehydrate rather than dry out the skin. If you adopt a healthy stress-limited lifestyle, you will notice an immediate improvement in your skin quality.

Teeth 

Well-being isn’t always about what you do on the inside to maintain your optimal health; it’s also about how you appear to others. Human beings are social animals, and we are strongly affected by our interactions with others. That’s one reason people pay so much attention to their teeth. 

Excellent dental care, such as the kind you can receive from https://peninsulafamilydentist.com, can alter the way you feel about yourself and how much success you attain in the world. With a smile that is clean, shiny, and white, you can’t fail to impress your friends, co-workers, and boss.

Emotional Health 

Mind 

Now to the intangible aspects of your health that are just as important as the physical side. The mind is a set of faculties that are responsible for mental phenomena. In simple terms, the mind can be described as the imagination, memory, thoughts, individual will, and bodily sensations.

A healthy mind is a balanced mental and emotional state without any intrusive thoughts or memories. A healthy mind allows you to be productive throughout the day and to enjoy your life without feeling stress or ill-will; you can improve the health of your mind with mindfulness.  

Emotions 

Emotions are closely connected with the mind when thoughts, ideas, and impressions arise that create positive or negative emotions – sometimes a mixture of both, which leads to “mixed feelings.” Improve your emotional health by refining your mind with meditation and knowledge.

This is a collaborative post.

Melinda