Posts tagged with 'nature'
Practising "being": remembering to wake up, appreciate & be open to surprise
24th September 2014
In her wonderful poem "The summer day", Mary Oliver wrote: Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean - the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my …
Landscape and human health laboratory: studying how nature affects us
4th April 2011
I just tumbled into Frances Kuo's "Landscape and Human Health Laboratory" website at the University of Illinois. Fascinating. I can remember the past internal admonition to "exercise the children" if we wanted more peace and quiet later in the day. Much the same kind of internal/shared dialogue as we now …
Peer groups, Cumbria spring group – fourth morning: honouring my mother
9th May 2010
The last morning of the group. I wake a bit "troubled". This is the ebb and flow of the group. Feelings tend to be more intense here. As the "group river" flows its four day course, I know that I'm likely to move through a series of different emotional states. …
Peer groups, Cumbria spring group – third morning: emotional closeness, green issues, & dancing
8th May 2010
Third morning. It's after 7.00am. Yesterday I wrote on "Authenticity & feedback". The group seems to be "speeding up" now. That's partly because I've got less time this morning. Fairly typically at home, I try to have my light off by 10.15pm and get up by 5.15am. Last night we …
Recent research: two studies on depression, one on sex, & three on positive psychology
24th September 2009
Here are half a dozen research papers that have recently interested me (all details & abstracts to these studies are given further down this blog posting). The first by Fournier et al is about whether to choose antidepressants or psychotherapy to treat depression. They found that marriage, unemployment and having …
Recent research: six studies on positive psychology, goals, relationships, caregiving, mindfulness & nature
27th August 2009
Here are half a dozen studies that one could loosely put under the broad umbrella of positive psychology. Zorba the Greek said "Take what you want and pay for it, says God." and Niemiec et al's study, on the effects of achieving different kinds of goal, supports this statement (for …