Calm Your Heart

New research shows that negative thoughts can be physiologically harmful, while positive thinking calms the heart rate and even boosts the immune system and can make a significant positive health difference.
In a study carried out by academics at the universities of Exeter and Oxford, 135 healthy were divided into five groups and played a different set of audio instructions. The team took physical measurements of heart rate and sweat response and asked participants to report how they were feeling.
Questions included how safe they felt, how likely they were to be kind to themselves and how connected they felt to others. The two groups whose instructions encouraged them to be kind to themselves not only reported feeling more self-compassion and connection with others, but also showed a bodily response consistent with feelings of relaxation and safety. Their heart rates dropped along with the variation in length of time between their heartbeats - a healthy sign of a heart that can respond flexibly to changing situations. They also showed lower sweat response.
Meanwhile, instructions that induced a critical inner voice led to an increased heart rate and a higher sweat response - consistent with feelings of threat and distress.

The three other groups listened to recordings designed to induce a critical inner voice, put them into a positive, but competitive and self-enhancing mode, or an emotionally neutral shopping scenario.

While people in both the self-compassion and positive-but-competitive groups reported greater self-compassion and decreased self-criticism, only the self-compassion groups showed the positive bodily response.

The study, Soothing Your Heart and Feeling Connected: A New Experimental Paradigm to Study the Benefits of Self-Compassion, is published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science.

Five Attributes Happiness and Sex Share

Here is another way to ease pain. A 2004 study asked 900 American women how various daily activities made them feel and found that "intimate relations" topped the charts for happiness. Both reduce anxiety, reduce stress, boost your immune system, ease pain, and both reduce neuroticism, a trait marked by mood swings and frequent worry. Not sure who paid for the study to show the obvious.

Smiling Reduces Stress

Results of an interesting study to find out if smiling, even forced smiling can reduce stress. The Study is published in the journal Psychological Science.

Researchers used chopsticks to manipulate the facial muscles of their 169 participants into a neutral expression, a standard smile, or a Duchenne smile. A Duchenne smile engages the muscles around the mouth, raises the cheeks, and includes eyes.

In addition to the chopstick placement, some were explicitly instructed to smile. Then, they were subjected to a series of stress-inducing, multitasking activities, which they struggled to perform while continuing to hold the chopsticks in their mouths. The subjects' heart rates and self-reported stress levels were monitored throughout.

The participants who were instructed to smile recovered from the stressful activities with lower heart rates than participants who held neutral expressions. Those with Duchenne smiles were the most relaxed of all, with the most positive affect. Those with forced smiles held only by the chopsticks also reported more positive feelings than those who didn't smile.

When a situation has you feeling stressed or flustered, even the most forced smiles can genuinely decrease your stress and make you happier.