Humainologie creative dialogue Wed Nov10 on the Pandemic as Opportunity to Build Enthusiasm for life

“The neurochemistry that makes moving in unison euphoric also bonds strangers and builds trust. This is why moving together is one of the ways humans come together. Collective action reminds us what we are part of, and moving in community reminds us where we belong.” - Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.” – Seneca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_the_Younger

“We can all fight against loneliness by engaging in random acts of kindness.” – Gail Honeyman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gail_Honeyman

The pandemic has attacked us humans. For our dialogue tomorrow, Wednesday November 10, I propose a counterattack. This is the familiar strategy of doing something good in response to something bad that has happened. It is also very much in accord with the Stoic concept of using difficulties and setbacks as opportunities for growth and personal empowerment. Tomorrow we will come up with ideas for using the pandemic as an opportunity to build our enthusiasm for life.

Here are a few good questions to get your ideas started:

1. Based on your own lived experience before the pandemic, what are some things (activities, projects, initiatives) that lift your spirits (increase your joie de vivre)?

2. Of your activities since the pandemic began, what things (activities, projects, initiatives) have helped you keep your spirits up?

3. Now imagine at least one thing (activity, project, or initiative) that you have not yet tried - and that you could get started right away, before the pandemic ends - that you think might build your enthusiasm for life (joie de vivre) if you devoted time and effort to it.

4. And then use your imagination to suggest something simple that we could do together as part of our dialogue events (perhaps at check-in time), or something simple we could do together as one of our dialogue events, in the future, that would lift the spirits of our dialogue group and build social capital in Calgary.

The fourth question occurred to me after I finished reading Kelly McGonigal’s book. It’s all about the joy that comes in group activities from such things as dancing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00ezoTnw1HM or running marathons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQPEFlHsk6k or even just synchronized movements among participants who remain seated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipJmGC3v1t4 My synopsis of McGonigal’s book is appended below.

And here is the link provided by Shinobu for the Zoom dialogue tomorrow:

Topic: Humainologie Dialogue Session Time: Nov 10, 2021 06:30 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada) Every week on Wed, until Dec 29, 2021, 9 occurrence(s) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89600374916?pwd=OXg2dkF4NEtsMmNzSkdRdW1kdUV5UT09 Meeting ID: 896 0037 4916 Passcode: 12345

May I have this dance?

Arthur

Book: (Kelly McGonigal, PhD) The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage (2019)

This book is about how to use your body to get out-of-body experiences. Chapter 1, “The Persistence High,” begins with runners’ descriptions of the exhilaration they experience with their running. It’s compared to the experience of inebriation, to the experience of love, and to something akin to a spiritual experience. Then the author writes: “While runners have a reputation for praising the exercise high, the side effect is not exclusive to running. A similar bliss can be found in any sustained physical activity, whether that’s hiking, swimming, cycling, dancing, or yoga. However, the high emerges only after a significant effort.”

To begin experiencing the benefits the author notes: “Anything that keeps you moving and increases your heart rate is enough to trigger nature’s reward for not giving up. There’s no objective measure of performance you must achieve, no pace or distance you need to reach, that determines whether you experience an exercise-induced euphoria. You just have to do something that is moderately difficult for you and stick with it for at least twenty minutes. That’s because the runner’s high isn’t a running high. It’s a persistence high.”

A class of brain chemicals called endocannabinoids has been credited with the experience of euphoria. In a 2017 study, three things were found to increase endocannabinoids: cannabis intoxication, exercise, and social connection. Social connection is another theme of Chapter 1. It made good evolutionary sense for euphoria to develop as a result of physical activity and social connection. In the GoodGym program in London, older individuals who were socially isolated were asked to be the “coach” for runners who visited them. “Their role is to keep the runners motivated by giving them somewhere and someone to run to.” The runners make these social calls and sometimes help out with chores in the isolated elder’s home. “The link between physical activity and social connection offers a compelling reason to be active. It also serves as an important reminder that we humans need one another to thrive.”

If you want to get hooked on exercise, try reading Chapter 2, “Getting Hooked.” It won’t happen the first day, but “sedentary adults who begin high-intensity training show an increase in enjoyment over time, with pleasure peaking at six weeks.” Nora Haefele “didn’t start racing until her mid-fifties. Now sixty-two years old, she has completed more than two hundred events, including eighty-five half marathons.” She often finishes last, and “she’s found that most people cheer even harder for runners at the end of the pack. …She takes particular pride in persevering. At one half marathon in Harrisburg, it was raining so hard that the puddles were ankle deep…. Haefele was the final runner to reach the finish line, but she earned first in her age group because everyone else in her category had backed out.” The author asked Haefele if the races reminded her of anything and she first answered that it was like being in church and celebrating the world and then said it was like going to a rave and that after a race, “I’m in love with everybody, and sometimes it lasts the whole day…. All’s well, with the world, everybody’s wonderful. If all you have to do is run thirteen miles to get that, it’s so worth it.” Haefele encourages everyone to get started and says once she did that, the thing she had been so afraid of changed her life. She refers to a quote from John Bingham, “The miracle isn’t that I finished, it’s that I had the courage to start.”

McGonigal, who loves kickboxing and leads group exercises, learned (after becoming a psychologist) “that the capacities to keep a beat and mirror other people’s movements are both related to empathy.” A case can be made that exercise is even more important for older adults than for younger: “Our brains change as we age, and adults lose up to 13 per cent of the dopamine receptors in the reward system with each passing decade. This loss leads to less enjoyment of everyday pleasures, but physical activity can prevent the decline. Compared to their inactive peers, active older adults have reward systems that more closely resemble those of individuals who are decades younger. This may be one reason exercise is so strongly linked to happiness and a reduced risk of depression as we get older. It may also explain why people who eschewed exercise earlier in life find themselves drawn to it as they age.”

In Chapter 3, “Collective Joy,” the author describes the experience of team rowing (including the team’s sense of being a single entity). Synchronized movement in dancing delivers a similar out-of-body experience. Marching can do it too and can also make everyone who is marching in step feel stronger. One reason the military uses marching is because it also sends a signal of their power to any potential enemy. “In some basic and primal way, when we move together, we tie our fates together, and we become invested in the well-being of those we move with. Anthropologists believe that this may be the most important function of collective joy: to strengthen the social ties that encourage cooperation.”

Chapter 4, “Let Yourself Be Moved,” describes the effect of music on physically challenging tasks. The theme from “Rocky” can give an extra push to a marathon runner reaching the end of endurance. Soundtracks are used to improve athletic performance, and music has been thought of as a legal performance-enhancing drug. One person who found that music helped her with post-surgical recovery referred to a quote from Martin Luther King Jr: “If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. But by all means, keep moving.” A collegiate track and field club that had experienced divisiveness was brought back together to achieve a record-breaking performance when their manager made a motivational video of them that was set to the music of “We are Family.” Parkinson’s disease patients have experienced improvements in bodily movement and facial expressiveness in a program run by Juilliard.

By accomplishing something we had thought was beyond our limits, we empower ourselves and inspire others. “Overcoming Obstacles,” (Chapter 5) describes programs for handicapped persons and others for normal adults, such as “Tough Mudder,” a “ten-mile obstacle course described as ‘the toughest event on the planet,’” with obstacles specifically designed to seem “beyond your limits” which turn out to be within your limits if you can get past the terror of facing them. By confronting terror and turning it to triumph, participants shed their sense of limitations. Obstacle course designer Nolan Kombol noticed spontaneous collaboration at one of the “Tough Mudder” events and began to include obstacles designed to foster collaboration. Natural disasters create challenges that inspire people to help strangers. One researcher who conducted a rigorous scientific analysis of hope “found that this state of mind – so crucial to our ability to persist in the face of life’s obstacles – requires three things. The first is a defined goal, that object on which hope lives. The second is a pathway to reach your goal. There must be steps you can take that lead to progress.” The third thing is self-confidence, what Chapter 5 is all about. Overcoming obstacles makes all the difference to the outcomes in life.

In Chapter 6, “Embrace Life,” McGonigal refers to the work of researcher Terry Louise Terhaar. Experience in the outdoors can produce “elevated states of mind [which] confer a survival advantage…. In such a state, she argues, we are more likely to overcome physical pain, fear, or despair. …The examples Terhaar cites include moving heavy rocks, lifting fallen trees, and escaping unsafe conditions, even if injured.” Exercising in the outdoors, referred to as “green exercise” by psychologists, can have powerful antidepressant effects. Green exercise as a group activity can take many different forms. One option is community gardening. “A 2017 analysis of urban community gardens…found that green spaces build social capital. They increase both bonding capital – a sense of belonging, trust, and friendship – and bridging capital, the broad social network you can draw on when you need help.”

Chapter 7, “How We Endure,” is about suffering and ultramarathons and the companionship of agony and joy in living a full life. Many ultrarunners have struggled with depression, and ultrarunning has probably rescued some from suicide. “The events are not about suffering for suffering’s sake, but suffering in a natural environment that invites, almost guarantees, moments of self-transcendence.” To my reading, this book is inspiring and useful as a source of ideas both for building social capital and for achieving personal transcendence.