Knock-knock
It’s me.
How are you today? Hope you had a great start of the week. It’s amazing how much sometimes we can do during one day, when we have lots of energy, and during other days we may drag ourselves throughout the week looking forward to the weekend. Although we may have just had one.
If that sounds true to you for a few weeks, it maybe a sign of a lack of love in your life.
Positive psychology and research in the area of love by Dr. Barbara Fredrickson suggest that our body needs love as plants need sun and water.
Love nourishes our body, it helps us be resilient to stress, to harsh circumstances. It makes us feel happier and more socially interconnected. Love helps us grow spiritually, emotionally and mentally, as it changes our biochemistry to facilitate recuperation and immune-boosting properties.
Love is like oxygen and food to us. And not just in poetic sense. Drawing on science, we can trace the effect of love, or its absence, on our genetic blueprint. It changes the way DNA is expressed within our cells.
The love you experience or not, may change tomorrow’s architecture of your cells and the way you experience the world around you, your vitality and longevity.
The same way the supply of clean air and nutritious food predict your days on Earth, so does supply of love.
But many people refer to love differently. Let’s get away from romantic or sexual love towards a connecting feeling of joy and love. This is what science suggests helps us live longer and happier.
Barbara tested effects of a simple loving-kindness meditation on the brain and body chemistry. She has found that when positivity and kindness get prioritised, on the level of feeling and through meditation, there are some other positive side-effects. Relationships of people with others get enriched. Now that is something I’m very interested in.
Hope you too.
If you are curious to try, here is one of her meditations: http://www.positivityresonance.com/_avideo/Love%202.0%20Meditation%20Loving-Kindness_v2.mp3
With love
Darya