Exercise fights Depression - The New York Times article

Exercise fights Depression – New York Times article

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/well/move/how-exercise-might-keep-depression-at-bay.html?contentCollection=smarter-living&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Exercise may be an effective treatment for depression and might even help prevent us from becoming depressed in the first place, according to three timely new studies. The studies pool outcomes from past research involving more than a million men and women and, taken together, strongly suggest that regular exercise alters our bodies and brains in ways that make us resistant to despair

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Scientists have long questioned whether and how physical activity affects mental health. While we know that exercise alters the body, how physical activity affects moods and emotions is less well understood.

Past studies have sometimes muddied rather than clarified the body and mind connections. Some randomized controlled trials have found that exercise programs, often involving walking, ease symptoms in people with major depression.

But many of these studies have been relatively small in scale or had other scientific deficiencies. A major 2013 review of studies related to exercise and depression concluded that, based on the evidence then available, it was impossible to say whether exercise improved the condition. Other past reviews similarly have questioned whether the evidence was strong enough to say that exercise could stave off depression.

A group of global public-health researchers, however, suspected that newer studies and a more rigorous review of the statistical evidence might bolster the case for exercise as a treatment of and block against depression.

So for the new analyses, they first gathered all of the most recent and best-designed studies about depression and exercise.

Then, for perhaps the most innovative of the new studies, which was published last month in Preventive Medicine, they focused on whether exercise could help to prevent someone from developing depression.

The scientists knew that many past studies of that topic had relied on people providing reports about how much they had exercised. We human beings tend to be notoriously unreliable in our memories of past workouts, though.

 So the researchers decided to use only past studies that had objectively measured participants’ aerobic fitness, which will rise or fall depending on whether and how much someone exercises. Participants’ mental health also had to have been determined with standard testing at the start and finish of the studies, and the follow-up time needed to have been at least a year and preferably longer.

Ultimately, the researchers found several large-scale past studies that met their criteria. Together, they contained data on more than 1,140,000 adult men and women.

Among these million-plus people, the links between fitness and mental health turned out to be considerable. When the researchers divided the group into thirds, based on how aerobically fit they were, those men and women with the lowest fitness were about 75 percent more likely to have been given diagnoses of depression than the people with the greatest fitness. The men and women in the middle third were almost 25 percent more likely to develop depression than those who were the most fit.

In a separate study (some of the scientists were involved in each of the reviews), researchers looked at whether exercise might be useful as a treatment for depression. In that analysis, which was published in June in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, they pooled data from 25 past studies in which people with clinically diagnosed depression began some type of exercise program. Each study had to include a control group that did not exercise and be otherwise methodologically sophisticated.

The pooled results persuasively showed that exercise, especially if it is moderately strenuous, such as brisk walking or jogging, and supervised, so that people complete the entire program, has a “large and significant effect” against depression, the authors wrote. People’s mental health tended to demonstrably improve if they were physically active.

The final review offers some hints about why. Published in February in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, it took on the difficult issue of what happens within our bodies during and after exercise that might affect and improve our moods. The researchers analyzed 20 past studies in which scientists had obtained blood samples from people with major depression before and after they had exercised. The samples on the whole indicated that exercise significantly reduced various markers of inflammation and increased levels of a number of different hormones and other biochemicals that are thought to contribute to brain health.

But the researchers also caution that most of the physiological studies they reviewed were too small and short-term to allow for firm conclusions about how exercise might change the brain to help fight off gloom.

Still, the three reviews together make a sturdy case for exercise as a means to bolster mental as well as physical health, said Felipe Barreto Schuch, an exercise scientist at the Centro Universitário La Salle in Canoas, Brazil, who, with Brendon Stubbs, a professor at King’s College in London, was a primary author on all of the reviews.

Many more experiments are still needed to determine the ideal amounts and types of exercise that might help both to prevent and treat depression, Dr. Schuch said.

But he encouraged anyone feeling overwhelmed by recent events, or just by life, to go for a run or a bike ride. “The main message” of his and his colleagues’ reviews, he said, “is that people need to be active to improve their mental health.”

Tai Chi Chuan, the subway, life...

Tai Chi Chuan, the subway, life…

It struck me on the subway the other day, being knocked about, jostled, shaken, rattled, that much of life is what is being done to you.

I don’t mean this in a victimhood way, but in the sense that much of what happens is a result of the natural course of events exacting their will on your existence.

The subway does you. You ride it for a convenience, but the experience is sort of out of your hands. 

Well, not entirely. I saw a guy stand on his feet without using any arms support. He turned his subway ride into a game to challenge himself. This has no impact on the subway, just his enhanced balance.

Gravity also does you. Your spinal structure does you too. Your physical reactions to humidity, heat and cold also do you. There are lots of things that impact your experience that simply are. You go with the flow, take advantage of the situation as best you can, fight it (not necessarily a bad way to go), guard against it, give in to it (not necessarily a good way to go), or resist it.

And so it is with tai chi, where I believe you take advantage of those forces and use them to your advantage. While there are forces to contend with, there are ways to harness those forces. They can help you.

In a way, this feels like those amazing human beings who take a horrible situation and turn it into a profound experience. There are many such individuals, right? The forces are now less an obstacle, but a challenge and even, perhaps, a game, a way to create a benefit.

Back on the subway, I tend to view such impositions as things that are in my way.  If only, I whine, if only…

If only the subway was not so loud and noisy and screechy. (People who can’t hear would LOVE to hear those sounds.) If it was really smooth. If all passengers were more civil. If I could always get a seat.

Tai chi has something to say about all this.

In push hands, in my view, what you always do is accommodate the other. The same with sword dueling. Their force or strength, the way they manipulate, their intention, all these can be to your advantage. Hard to believe, but anyone in push hands or sword, even if they cannot do it well, know this is true. Not resisting, non-doing, relaxation are all integral to this art. The question here is who is softer?

It takes tremendous skill to find this way. There are many who don’t even see it, and continue to make it game of dominance, a “martial art”. The question here is who is winning?

The form itself uses forces as they are to give you a new way to interact with life forces. Gravity, the ground, the air, the spine that keeps you upright, the use of natural energy to spring out of the ground to shift to the next leg. It’s all non-doing, it’s all taking advantage of what you live in, and it finds a way to let relaxation bring out these advantages.

A true challenge!

Tai Chi Chuan – A Meaningful Activity or an Activity with Meaning?

Tai Chi Chuan – A Meaningful Activity or an Activity with Meaning?

Is the value in tai chi the meaning you bring to it? Or is it meaningful by virtue of the experience that happens as you participate.

I think of a friend of mine, Ted, who clearly feels his time is best spent with activities that HAVE meaning.  Teaching, protesting, volunteerism, making money so you can support a worthy cause, and so forth.  All of these have meaning and some activities carry the meaning along with them.

The other end of spectrum is that meaning arrives purely from being IN the activity itself and bursts forth out of the activity.  Some of these may appear to be a waste of time.  Meditating, balancing the checkbook, watching a silly TV show, reading a book for pleasure on the beach, hangin’ out in a bar, or just lying on the beach (no book in sight, just getting a tan).

Tai chi crosses both areas. In one sense, it is good for health, may promote a community of like-minded individuals, may give you a martial art, or a sense of relaxation and centeredness that balances out the rest of your life.  You now have a practice that brings something meaningful that you want in life. In this regard, it has meaning. External meaning. You read about it, or a friend tells you of the benefits and you want that in your life.

Or it is just there and you participate to see what happens next.  No intrinsic meaning. Just because. Curiosity. And whatever happens happens. No manipulation, no fantasy, no desire to prove yourself or compare yourself to others. Following for the sake of following. Tai chi reveals itself to you. In this regard, it has meaning. Internal meaning. You don’t know all that much about it, but through the process of working on it, it brings some unexpected benefit to your life.

Of course, tai chi is both.  One can get in the way of the other. Or one can encourage the other.

The external approach can lead to fantasy; the internal approach can lead to self indulgence.

The external approach can motivate; the internal approach can be a deeply satisfying work of creativity.

So I often wonder why you (or I) practice tai chi.

Tai Chi Chuan - Doing It Your Way?

Tai Chi Chuan – Doing It Your Way?

I have run into a pattern in students. Many of them really think they know what they need in order to learn tai chi.  What exercises “work”, what type of exercise, how the class should go, what mix of instruction works and so forth.  They decide a certain exercise is a waste of time, but another one is invaluable.  If they find another one confusing or difficult, no need to waste any time on it. Best to get back to their comfort zone and do it their way.

It’s sad to say but the best thing to do is pay attention and try to do your best, regardless of the exercise. Yep, it is that simple and that difficult.

Don’t decide what is good and not good, right and wrong, helpful or not helpful. It is stunning that some students approach class as if they KNOW what they need. If the exercise is deemed unworthy (too simple, not really about tai chi, too difficult) they pass it by.  Not only do they pass up an opportunity to try something new or challenging, but they pass by a possibility of LEARNING something NEW.  It is BECAUSE it is hard, or simple, or seemingly not what they think it should be that it may have tremendous value. And you will never know unless you put your heart and soul into it, in this moment. And even if the moment fails you, that success doesn’t happen NOW, it may come back to enlighten you another time.  There is no wasted time in keeping at it in tai chi class.

The only wasted time is when you have decided that you don’t have to work at this moment, this exercise, this movement, that you don’t have to pay attention, or work at it.

I have been guilty of the same.  Maggie would have us do something over and over and over and yes, sometimes I’d think “what a waste of time.”  But I did it anyway, as best I could.  Then a few days later a light bulb would go off, and WOW, I get what that was all about.  And I learned something new.

I have to admit, my behavior at times was not helpful in class.  I went through a period as Maggie’s assistant that I felt I had heard her words so many times that I didn’t need to listen any more. So I would go to the side of the class and start to talk to someone about something else. Maggie noticed.  But for some reason, she never called me on it. Why, I really don’t know. It finally dawned on me that just being still and listening to her thoughts one more time was less disruptive to her, and a new discipline that I needed to conquer. You never know how the lesson might strike you on repeat # 134. You just don’t know…

It’s what you don’t want to do that often gives you the greatest lesson.  This mindlessly simple exercise may hold the key.  This confusing sequence may ultimately build that muscle of concentration merely by keeping at it.

It is rarely easy this thing called tai chi.  It is rarely simple.  And often what we don’t like is what we really need.

And the oddity of all this is that a student is in class to learn.  Since when is learning about what you already know or feel good about? It’s the challenge in facing what you don’t know that truly makes you grow. It’s not whether the result you want emerges, it’s all about the effort you put into it. That’s tai chi!

I often tell students that even bad practice is good practice.  Why? Because the effort to engage with something difficult will always pay off. No one begins tai chi “getting it”.  Most of us flounder and sometimes flounder for years before something clicks.

Essentially, I am talking about resistance. In many forms. Resistance can be an insistence that this exercise doesn’t help, won’t work, it is useless, it is not entertaining, it is physically too demanding, I don’t have a natural skill set working for me here, my physical limitations prevent me from learning this, and so forth.

In tai chi, we are working on letting resistance go. And sometimes the only way to do that is to get even more involved in the task at hand: not involving yourself in the belief that you KNOW this isn’t going to help before you stick with it and see what happens.

Look, I have Irish genes.  We are famous for being stubborn. Resistance is practically my middle name! Why do you think we are called the “Fighting Irish”?

I recall a very good student saying that once she gave up trying to “get it”, class time opened up and was far more gratifying and valuable.  The resistance? It was thinking that if you don’t “get” something, you are wasting your time.

One way to “get” but not try to get is to just “be” with the exercise. Let it do YOU. Follow without effort or desire for result.

This is more than just “go along to get along”. It’s more along the lines of you have to “be in it to win it.” (Can you tell I like Hallmark cards?)

There will always be challenges that elude you. And a life full of constant effort is not a good way to live. We do need our comfort time. It’s important. But keep in mind that in a tai chi class, you also need a patient determination and trust that your efforts will help. 

Do you know how some people feel when they don’t resist? They feel like they don’t exist.

Our tendency to resist is so deep, hard to see, hard to overcome. It can feel like life itself.

Others find freedom when they don’t resist.

Tai Chi Chuan - Like Learning to Play an Instrument By Ear

This article reminds me of tai chi in so many ways.  Worth a careful read!

Tom

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/magazine/learning-to-play-by-ear-in-iran.html?ref=world&_r=0

Tai Chi Chuan and Listening

Tai Chi Chuan and Listening

I’m always amazed at how poor most folk’s listening skills are.  I’ve done a lot of work on my own listening skills.  I’d say I have moved from D+ to maybe a B-. A few F’s here and there.

But even worse than listening to others, we rarely listen to ourselves.  By that I mean, what we say, what it means, how others hear it – this never registers. Often, we are clueless.

When we speak, there are two of us present, not just one.

And one would hope that tai chi might have some influence on this because so much of it has to do with awareness.  We begin with ourselves, we then work with others.  Yet how rare it is to see any of this spill into everyday life.

Let me give you an example of poor vs. good listening in life.

Poor:

T: I’m going to India.

B: wow, I know lots of people who have gone to India and hated it, though some have loved it. I think people get sick over there so you should be careful. The Taj Mahal is really worth seeing, my aunt was stunned by it, but she doesn’t want to go back to India, too many poor people, too sad.

(We’ve all been there!)

Good:

T: I’m going to India.

B: Where? (pause.)

What brings you to India? (pause.)

Do you have your reservation yet? (pause.)

When are you going? (pause.)

The point being, good listening engages the speaker to express themselves, poor listening takes control of the conversation.

In the poor example, B doesn’t even hear himself.  He just rattles on, oblivious to the statement T just made. (Because what T really said was: I’m going to India, do you find this of interest?) In certain situations, if you tell B what he just said, he may be surprised, deny it, or get angry. Or just not care.

The inability to hear yourself comes to mind in an example in Stephen Sondheim’s Passion.  Fosca (sad, sickly) is walking with a soldier she later comes to love.  He is rattling on about love in very idealistic and noble terms. He doesn’t see her need, her challenge in terms of intimacy, the improbability of attaining this ethereal concept in her sickly and somewhat morbid state.  She then lets him have it big time, pouring out her reaction to his self indulgent puffy nonsense. Let me paraphrase: “How dare you talk to me of such nonsense when it should be clear to both of us that this will never happen for me. Why taunt me with such a concept?” He wasn’t listening to what he was saying. Or who he was saying it to. Clueless.

Tai chi.

It would foolish to think that tai chi would change all this, yet the kernel of change is there.  You begin by listening to your body. For most beginners, this is a foreign concept. We never see our habits, never see our inability, and never see how our movement doesn’t match what the teacher demonstrates. Most who begin tai chi quit rather quickly. It’s a slow process.

Then we work in push hands, and again, mostly your partner is viewed in terms of what I want. As in, I want to do something to this person. But the study is more about being WITH this person and you become less and less while what they are doing/wanting becomes more and more. The only way to hear this person is to be empty. A favorite teacher I know says, “There is only one mind here, and it’s YOUR (the partner’s) mind.” His mind has been put on hold and now he can better hear you.

I highly recommend books on listening. There are lots of good ones on the market.

In tai chi, I recommend being even more attentive to what you are doing in the form and what your partner is doing in push hands.  By this I mean attentive like you might observe a laboratory rat.  How does it move? What does it want? What makes it go for the heroin?  Start with investigation, not manipulation. Be curious. Don’t fix it, just see it. Give it some time to be itself and see what that is. We move on from there…

We learn more from our flaws than from anything else. Begin with here and now, not some fantasy of who you would like to be. Find a time to listen, on every level, in some period of time, to something.

Just listen. Nothing else. Allow presence of this body, air, that person, sound, a feeling, ground, silence.

Run Hide Fight - New York Times article

The article below discusses (instinctual) flight or fight, (now called freeze, flight or fight responses), or (volitional choices of) run, hide or fight.  Cognitive appraisal is not a tai chi option.  None of these make up good push hands. The article below discusses these options but I leave it to you to think about what we are doing in push hands that leads to fearless being with, allowing, letting go, releasing. How do we get from instinctual responses to non-strategic strategies?  A puzzlement.  Tom.

New York Times

December 18, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/opinion/sunday/run-hide-fight-is-not-how-our-brains-work.html

‘Run, Hide, Fight’ Is Not How Our Brains Work

IN this age of terror, we struggle to figure out how to protect ourselves — especially, of late, from active shooters.

One suggestion, promoted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security, and now widely disseminated, is “run, hide, fight.” The idea is: Run if you can; hide if you can’t run; and fight if all else fails. This three-step program appeals to common sense, but whether it makes scientific sense is another question.

Underlying the idea of “run, hide, fight” is the presumption that volitional choices are readily available in situations of danger. But the fact is, when you are in danger, whether it is a bicyclist speeding at you or a shooter locked and loaded, you may well find yourself frozen, unable to act and think clearly.

Freezing is not a choice. It is a built-in impulse controlled by ancient circuits in the brain involving the amygdala and its neural partners, and is automatically set into motion by external threats. By contrast, the kinds of intentional actions implied by “run, hide, fight” require newer circuits in the neocortex.

Contemporary science has refined the old “fight or flight” concept — the idea that those are the two hard-wired options when in mortal danger — to the updated “freeze, flee, fight.” While “freeze, flee, fight” is superficially similar to “run, hide, fight,” the two expressions make fundamentally different assumptions about how and why we do what we do, when in danger.

Why do we freeze? It’s part of a predatory defense system that is wired to keep the organism alive. Not only do we do it, but so do other mammals and other vertebrates. Even invertebrates — like flies — freeze. If you are freezing, you are less likely to be detected if the predator is far away, and if the predator is close by, you can postpone the attack (movement by the prey is a trigger for attack).

The freezing reaction is accompanied by a hormonal surge that helps mobilize your energy and focus your attention. While the hormonal and other physiological responses that accompany freezing are there for good reason, in highly stressful situations the secretions can be excessive and create impediments to making informed choices. 

A vivid example of freezing was captured in a video of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. After the bomb went off, many people froze. Then, some began to try to escape (run), while others were slower on the uptake.

This variation in response is typical. Sometimes freezing is brief and sometimes it persists. This can reflect the particular situation you are in, but also your individual predisposition. Some people naturally have the ability to think through a stressful situation, or to even be motivated by it, and will more readily run, hide or fight as required. But for others, additional help is needed.

In my lab at New York University, we have created a version of this predicament using rats. The animals have been trained, through trial and error, to “know” how to escape in a certain dangerous situation. But when they are actually placed in the dangerous situation, some rats simply cannot execute the response — they stay frozen. If, however, we artificially shut down a key subregion of the amygdala in these rats, they are able to overcome the built-in impulse to freeze and use their “knowledge” about what to do.

We can learn a great deal about the basic mechanisms of how the brain detects and responds to threats through studies of rats. But people are not rats. We have additional cognitive resources, such as the ability to conceptualize our situation and re-evaluate it.

Studies by the psychologists James Gross at Stanford, Kevin Ochsner at Columbia and Elizabeth Phelps and me at New York University have shown that if people cognitively reappraise a situation, it can dampen their amygdala activity. This dampening may open the way for conceptually based actions, like “run, hide, fight,” to replace freezing and other hard-wired impulses.

How to encourage this kind of cognitive reappraisal? Perhaps we could harness the power of social media to conduct a kind of collective cultural training in which we learn to reappraise the freezing that occurs in dangerous situations. In most of us, freezing will occur no matter what. It’s just a matter of how long it will last.

If we could come to use the fact that we are freezing to trigger a reappraisal in a moment of danger, we might just be able to dampen the amygdala enough to accelerate our ability to shift into the action mode required for “run, hide, fight.” Even if this cut only a few seconds off our freezing, it might be the difference between life and death.

Joseph LeDoux, a professor of science at New York University, directs the Emotional Brain Institute. He is the author of “Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety.”