Two great articles on ergonomics in today’s Times: a review of a standing desk and a panel discussion of the article. (For a third, read the Wall Street Journal’s January 2010 piece on the dangers of sedentary life.) Standing up while working is starting to trickle into various offices and schools.

As I noted in the comments, I love ideas for work habit adaptation. I fidget all day long and finally figured out that a break every 90 minutes (as long as it’s not to the fridge!) is a really good thing. In college I propped a desk on top of another, to read standing. And I definitely miss the ease of an easel (with a stool to perch on). Maybe that setup will make its way into our computer tech some day.

Stay Grounded

Yoga teachers often use the word grounded. It’s a verb (to ground through the feet) and an adjective (a grounded feeling). But what does that really mean? It’s a yoga cliche, a phrase that’s used so often it’s lost some of its punch. And most of us didn’t know the definition to begin with.

Read the whole thing on The Huffington Post

New article in the Journal links prolonged TV watching to an increased rate of death — even for people who exercise! The problem is the extended periods of sitting still. And it seems that sitting on a plane, at a computer, or — gasp — reading a book is just as bad.

Read more

“For those just coming back from vacation, think carefully about what you are going to put your fresh, valuable mind to in your first few days. Value this resource highly. It may be your only chance to see the mountain you are on, to decide if you’re taking the right path up, or even if it’s the right mountain to be climbing at all.” ~ David Rock in Psychology Today

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on clearing my mind more often during the day. The natural tendency for a busy mind is to work ever-harder to crack a problem or find an innovative solution. The yogic belief is that a clear, unburdened, relaxed mind is actually a more creative, efficient problem solver. And now that belief has a boost from hardcore science.

Read more

Good reminder as the holiday music starts playing: exercise creates physical, as well as mental, buffers for stress in the brain. Rats who had run for several weeks before stress tests (like swimming in cold water):

• showed less activation in neurons associated with stress
• displayed less anxiety and helplessness
• maintained calmness and curiosity, even when injected with oxidizing chemicals

But of course it’s not instant:

Rats that ran for only three weeks did not show much reduction in stress-induced anxiety, but those that ran for at least six weeks did.

Six weeks ’til New Year’s. Go!

The New York Times: “Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious”

The Times had a (long) article on worriers in Sunday’s magazine. Studies have identified a subset of infants/children with “high-reactive” temperaments. They go on to be inhibited adolescents, and anxious adults. So if relaxation techniques don’t seem to do you much good, it could be that you’re naturally wired more tightly. This isn’t all bad, however:

People with a high-reactive temperament — as long as it doesn’t show itself as a clinical disorder — are generally conscientious and almost obsessively well-prepared. Worriers are likely to be the most thorough workers and the most attentive friends. Someone who worries about being late will plan to get to places early. Someone anxious about giving a public lecture will work harder to prepare for it. Test-taking anxiety can lead to better studying; fear of traveling can lead to careful mapping of transit routes.

Kagan told me that in the 40 years he worked at Harvard, he hired at least 200 research assistants, “and I always looked for high-reactives. They’re compulsive, they don’t make errors, they’re careful when they’re coding data.”

…what distinguishes the high-reactives who learn to adapt from those who don’t often comes down to something simple, like finding one or two supportive friends — or, like Mary [a test subject] and her ballet, finding something they’re good at and can feel self-confident about.

No mention of yoga or other treatments for anxiety; the article is more focused on presenting the background research and the corresponding brain anatomy.

Any worriers want to be my intern?

Wired has a great article about the increasing effectiveness of placebos (and how the drug companies are scrambling to keep up), and it turns out that a large variable is COLOR:

Yellow pills
make the most effective antidepressants, like little doses of pharmaceutical sunshine.

Red pills
can give you a more stimulating kick. Wake up, Neo.

The color green
reduces anxiety, adding more chill to the pill.

White tablets—
particularly those labeled “antacid”—are superior for soothing ulcers, even when they contain nothing but lactose.

So I wasn’t crazy when I insisted that certain colors are necessary to wear on certain days. I’ve gotten some teasing for that one. And the whole color scheme of my apartment suddenly makes sense.

Frequency and wording also play a part:

More is better,
scientists say. Placebos taken four times a day deliver greater relief than those taken twice daily.

Branding matters.
Placebos stamped or packaged with widely recognized trademarks are more effective than “generic” placebos.

Clever names
can add a placebo boost to the physiological punch in real drugs. Viagra implies both vitality and an unstoppable Niagara of sexy.

So think about that next time you’re naming a yoga class or practicing a mantra…

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

The Times has a profile of Tibetan monk Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, “The Happiest Man in the World.” He’s released a new book called Joyful Wisdom describing his methods.

In his book he recounts being extremely anxious as a child in Nepal, having had what a Manhattan psychiatrist would likely diagnose as panic attacks, and how he cured himself of this chronic anxiety by making his fears the focus of his meditation. He has had to earn his good cheer.

Rinpoche has studied both Western science and Tibetan Buddhist meditation in detail. He’s participated in scientific studies of meditation; since he’s spent over 10,000 hours meditating he’s considered an adept. (That’s the threshold for excellence, according to research.)

One form of meditation that seems particularly conducive to happiness, and stress reduction, is mindfulness meditation. This is generally a practice of observing the thoughts, body, etc, without trying to change anything. A clinical study of beginning meditators at a high-stress office, practicing mindfulness meditation thirty minutes a day for eight weeks, left them “saying that instead of feeling overwhelmed and hassled, they were enjoying their work.”

If you’d like some instruction in this practice, I know that Om Factory and New York Insight offer guided classes appropriate for all levels. Allyson Pimental and Michael Fayne, who teach the class at Om Factory, said that mindfulness meditation has been shown to help heart disease, multiple sclerosis, anxiety, depression, and many other ailments. My very first class at New York Insight got rid of a clenched jaw I hadn’t been able to close for two weeks. (Yes, I was a little stressed out.) I’ve also heard good things about the Dharma Punx talks at Lila Wellness. But there are many great centers around town, and many classes are by donation. So go try one on!

There was a great quote in the Times last week. Nicholas Kristoff, writing on the different neurology of liberals and conservatives, had mentioned that we often use the Internet to simply reinforce ideas we already have. To balance this narrowing tendency, he said we should seek out people with opposing viewpoints for regular debates. Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, wrote in to say Kristoff got the problem right, but the prescription wrong. “Simply exposing people to counterarguments may not accomplish much… and may inflame antagonisms.”

“Minds are very hard things to open, and the best way to open the mind is through the heart,” Professor Haidt says. “Our minds were not designed by evolution to discover the truth; they were designed to play social games.”

Beautifully put. Understanding is much more easily achieved by traveling, by spending time in another community, by getting to know and care about another person. Our monkey minds, our left brains, are doing their jobs well when they debate and dance around issues — if we want to get to the heart of things, let’s use the right tool!

Well, I’m back in the city again. A few days in Florida with my mom filled me up on oranges (and blues and greens). I feel sunny inside, even if it’s not so much outside.

With the return to city life came the return to Twitter, CNN, texting, and emails. (I could have continued them through my trip, but chose to take a fairly full break.) And, happily, the Times, which today published a great article on the science of concentration. We know we’re living in the Age of Distraction; Winifred Gallagher wrote Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life to refocus our attention on our control of the matter: “…your choices determine your experience, just as William James said.” (‘My experience is what I agree to attend to.’)

It’s like that old Ann Landers advice: no one can take advantage of you unless you let them. We can only be distracted by incessant emails if we choose to obsessively check them, or keep that notifier on. We can choose to wake up and run to our devices, or we can choose to first gather our thoughts at another table.

But what about those taxi rides / offices / airports / companions full of noise and distractions, out of our control?

Ms. Gallagher advocates meditation to increase your focus, but she says there are also simpler ways to put the lessons of attention researchers to use. Once she learned how hard it was for the brain to avoid paying attention to sounds, particularly other people’s voices, she began carrying ear plugs with her. When you’re trapped in a noisy subway car or a taxi with a TV that won’t turn off, she says you have to build your own “stimulus shelter.”

And a bit of practical advice:

She recommends starting your work day concentrating on your most important task for 90 minutes. At that point your prefrontal cortex probably needs a rest, and you can answer e-mail, return phone calls and sip caffeine (which does help attention) before focusing again. But until that first break, don’t get distracted by anything else, because it can take the brain 20 minutes to do the equivalent of rebooting after an interruption.

The last interesting takeaway was about scientists’ use of rhythmic light to assist our concentration. Regular, tiny pulses of light can create gamma waves in the brain, which are associated with focus and perception. This direct synchronization of neurons is interesting — I’ll be sure to consider strobe lights for my office — but I’m surprised the article did not mention music, a much more accessible assistant. Electronic music, with its lack of narrative and focus on atmosphere, does a great job of consolidating the fluctuations of the mind. (I posted a few favorite albums for yoga last month.) As background music, it’s often better than silence for concentration. There are even albums like “The Brainwave Suite” that promise to create alpha, theta, or delta brain waves with various ambient soundtracks. (I don’t know why they left out gamma.)

So, hopefully we can all learn to focus amid the symphony of modern life a bit better. Or we can stay on our smart phones, walking straight into traffic, and wait for Darwin to weed us out.