哈佛大学公开课《Positive Psychology 1504》学习笔记 - Health

1    Wonder Drug
1.    The wonder drug:
?     30 minutes of physical exercise, 4 times a week.
?    At least 15 minutes of mindful exercise 6 or 7 times a week.  
?    8 hours of sleep more or less per 24 hours.
?    A least 12 hugs a day.
2.    If you take this drug, this cocktail, I guarantee many of the benefits.
2    Exercise
2.1    Exercise is a need
3.    Exercise is not a luxury, it’s a need. And it’s a need just like oxygen, just like certain vitamins, just like protein and carbohydrates – our needs.
4.    We weren’t made or born to sit in front of a computer all day long, all just talk all day long.
5.    When we frustrate a need, we pay a price, both physical price as well as psychological price.
6.    When we don’t exercise, what we’re doing is that we are lowering our gene given level of happiness.  
2.2    Benefits of Exercise
7.    First psychological benefit: enhance self-esteem. We fell better about ourselves. We feel good right after we exercise, but also we feel good in the long term if we have a regular exercise regime.
8.    Psychological
?    Feel good
?    Enhances self-esteem
?    Induces calm
?    Improves thinking
?    Makes you more attractive
?    Lower anxiety and stress
?    Adjunctive treatment for clinical disorder
?    Improved cognitive functioning
9.    Physical
?    Weight loss/control
?    Reducing chronic diseases
?    Stronger immune system
10.    Better Sex
Both men and women strengthen libido – their sexual desire, enhances the likelihood of orgasms. People who exercise regularly have more and better sex.
Nature to be commanded must be obeyed.
2.3    Recovery
11.    There can not be too much of a good thing. Quantity affects quality
12.    It dose not mean that more is always better when it comes to exercise. Over training is similar to under training.
13.    Ideally you want to exercise 5 or 6 times a week, at least every other day.  Each time about 30 minutes, could go all the way up to one hour. Identify what’s good enough for you.
14.    The key here is to listen to your body. If your body is hurting, or beyond the slight discomfort, just stop it.
2.4    Overcoming barriers
15.    The first thing that we can do is divide and conquer. Start with walking for a mile, do it for a week or two weeks, and then build it up gradually. If we build it up gradually, exercise is not about pain. Overtime it even becomes sort of addictive, that we want to do it, that we long for it.
16.    Use distracters. Having something keep us going, for example, meditation, music etc..
17.    With social support to do exercise. Exercise success for the long term is to do it with other people.
18.    Often, when people don’t have enough time, it’s the first thing to go with exercise. However, it should be the last thing to go with exercise, especially during stressful period. Why? Because it is an investment. You may be losing the 45 minutes, you’ll gain so much more.
19.    Your memory actually gets better when you exercise, your creative levels go up, your concentration goes up significantly, energy level goes up significantly.
20.    Have a ritual around it.
21.    The best thing to do is just do it. The five minutes take-off.
22.    Recognize how important the exercise is in the subconscious level.
23.    Exercise has physical as well as mental and emotional side effects.
24.    The foundation for happiness revolution has to come with an exercise revolution. Why? Because if we don’t exercise, we are fighting against nature. So the foundation, the basis for the happiness revolution has to start from neck down though the body.
3    Mindfulness
3.1    The elements of meditation
25.    First of all, it’s focusing on one thing, whether it’s the movement, whether it’s the posture, whether it’s the breath, whether it’s compassion and kindness and loving. Whatever it is, but it’s focusing on one thing.
26.    The foundation of meditation is deep breathing, belly breathing – breathe all the way to your belly and then slowly, gently, gracefully breathing out.
27.    And finally, there’s no good or bad meditation. Meditation in a sense, doesn’t have a purpose when you are meditating.
28.    Meditation is about being present, being here and now, struggling with being in the here and now. When we lose our thought, when we lose our focus on the breath, simply bring it back.
3.2    Importance of Mindfulness Meditation
29.    Anxiety decrease significantly.
30.    Be happier, have better mood.
31.    Change the way the brain functions, making them more susceptible to positive emotions, more resilient in face of painful emotions.
32.    Increase emotional well being as well as physical well being. Meditation strengthens the psychological immune system in making us more resilient, as well as the physical immune system.  

3.3    Mindfulness Therapy
3.3.1    How Mindfulness Therapy Works
33.    The first level is about awareness and acceptance of the body signal. When we begin to experience a painful emotion, immediately going and becoming mindful, aware of where the physical manifestation is. Instead of going into this rumination, going immediately to the physical manifestation of it, to be body.
34.    It works because it creates an alternative neural pathway.  With a usual pathway that it’s created, when we feel dis-easy, it’s going into the mind, ruminating about it and usually going to the channel that existed before. When we are drawing, that’s when we are going to the body’s natural ability to heal. Our internal healer will take care of itself.
35.    The key, in order to become adept at it is to practice. To do it over and over again, there’s no quick fix.
36.    The first is body scan. Be aware of your body, just by lying down and thinking and observing.  Go through the whole body, and practice it, becoming more aware.
37.    Practice also mean, when we are losing focus, go back to it. The practice is not remaining completely centered for 30 minutes, the practice is losing focus and coming back.
38.    So this reaction of either going to the physical body, or sometimes going to the cognitive reconstruction, can be very useful.
39.    The effects of mindfulness meditation, mindfulness therapy – it’s quite literally mind boggling. What we’re doing and what mindful therapy does is change our focus from doing to being.
40.    When we want to fix it, very often it’s counter-productive. The internal healer, the internal wisdom knows best to deal with certain things – not all things, but certain things, such as metal afflictions, painful emotions.  So we’re shifting our focus from trying to fix to simply be with that emotion, with that experience, with the manifestation of the pain.
3.3.2    A quick mindfulness meditation
Harvardxingfuke17, 01:02
3.4    Breathing
41.    What I highly recommend doing is breathing. It’s very, very important to breathe.
42.    Calm and well being leads to deep breathing, and deep breathing in turn leads to calm and well being.
43.    Introduce three deep breaths strategically throughout the day can transform a life. Just before class starts, just when the class ends, just when I wake up in the morning, or the last thing before I go to bed.
44.    If I had to limit my advice on healthier living to just one tip, it would be simply to learn how to breathe correctly.
45.    Each time you get to a red light, use it as an opportunity to breathe deeply.
46.    Introduce deep breathing into your life, just a few times a day, that can have far-reaching consequences.
4    Sleep
4.1    Effects of Sleep
47.    The average is people need 8 hours sleep a day. And how do we know how much sleep we need? When do you wake up naturally? When we go to sleep when we’re tired? And that’s how we can gauge it. It’s around 8 hours.
48.    You can afford 8 hours sleep if you look at it as an investment, if you make it a priority.  And there’s a lot of return on investment on these 8 hours. Good return on the investment.
49.    First of all, physical immune system strengthens significantly.
50.    Energy level would increase. More sleep is generally better up to a certain point.
51.    If we don’t sleep enough, we’ll go beyond our basic level of weight, beyond its god given or genes given, our natural state.
52.    Reduce accidents.
53.    Cognitive functioning – whether it’s creativity, productivity as well as memory that is hurt when we don’t sleep, which is why sleep is such an important investment.
54.    When we don’t have enough sleep, we’ll get anxious.
55.    Affects depression in a even more significantly way for two reasons. The first reason that lack of sleep is likely to lead to depression is because, for the physical level again, we are cranky when we are tired.
56.    The second reason is what happens at night is that our mind processes a lot of things that we have gone through throughout the day. And very often it solves unresolved issues that we have gone through throughout the day. And when we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to “complete our dreaming” – complete problem solving through at night, we wake up with that problem unresolved, which might lead to depression.
57.    Sleep for the physical need as well as for the psychological need.
58.    So there’s beauty sleep for sure, but there is also happiness sleep as well as intelligence sleep. It’s good investment on every level.
4.2    Tips on Sleep
59.    The first thing – more or less 8 hours sleep a day.
60.    Naps when you don’t have enough sleep at night. Take a power nap for 15 or 20 minutes during the day, that to an extent restores some of the cognitive as well as the emotional capacities.
61.    Not to eat too much before you go to bed.
62.    Watch your exercise regime – not to exercise too late.
63.    For the one who at times had difficulty falling asleep, give yourself the permission to be human.
64.    And finally, what are your internal rhythms? How many hours in night do you need? Are you a night person or a morning person? Do you need to go to sleep at 10 pm? Or do you need to go to sleep at 5 am? What’s right for you?
65.    Try and create a life that is in line with your natural needs.
66.    People who get less than a full night's sleep are prone to feel less happy, more stressed, more physically frail and more mentally and physically exhausted as a result. Sufficient sleep makes us feel better, happier, more vigorous and vital.
5    Touch
5.1    Effects of Touch
67.    For physical health - it’s our immune system strengthens significantly with touch, weakens drastically without sufficient touch.
68.    It helps overcome injuries.
69.    Children grow more when they are touched.
70.    It’s also mental health. Children’s cognitive development is affected by touch – mental health in terms of mood disorders, eating disorders are associated very often with lack of touch.
71.    Depression and anxiety are caused by lack of touch, can be overcome often with more touch.
72.    Better sex life with touch.
5.2    Touch is a need
73.    Touch is a need just like physical exercise is a need, just like food and sleep are needs.
74.    We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.
75.    We need touch, it is an innate instinctual need.
76.    From now on and at the rest of your life – at least 5 hugs, preferably 12.
77.    The nice thing about hugs is that it’s a win-win. Because when we hug someone, we are hugged back; when we touch someone, we are touched back. It’s like happiness, when we share it, it grows. It’s a win-win, positive sum game.
78.    To respect the other person who don’t like touch.