For Mark Bertolini, CEO of health insurer Aetna, a near-death experience led him to make big changes in his personal life and at the company. Living with pain from a skiing accident inspired him to take up yoga and meditation, which made him wonder if it could also help his employees.
You can find the transcript here
New Zealand Herald 3:30 PM Tuesday Jun 9, 2015
Whether it’s singing in a choir, listening to Bach in the car or dancing to disco, most people enjoy some form of music – and increasingly it is being shown to have health benefits, too.
Researchers have found that classical music – especially compositions by Giuseppe Verdi – can significantly lower the listener’s blood pressure. And last month, a British study found that regularly listening to music improved both short-term and long-term memory in people with dementia. Music therapy is also used in aiding stroke patients and to help those with Parkinson’s learn to walk again.
Here we explore how listening to, learning and playing music helps…
One of the most intriguing ways in which music improves health is its effect on the heart and circulation.
In a 2008 study at the University of Maryland Medical Centre in the US, researchers measured ten healthy people’s blood pressure as they listened to music of their choice. Their blood vessels dilated by 26 per cent after listening to music they found ‘joyful’, compared with 19 per cent after watching a funny video and 11 per cent after listening to relaxing sound recordings.
Keeping blood pressure low means the blood vessels are less likely to stiffen and become blocked, which can lead to heart disease and attacks. Dr Michael Miller, the cardiologist who led the study, now prescribes listening to music to patients.
“We see the effects immediately, which suggests there is a direct effect on the blood vessels,” he says. “Music seems to harmonise the body’s autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for involuntary actions such as heart rate, digestion and perspiration.”
Dr Miller thinks there maybe an evolutionary explanation. “Music was part of our ancestors’ socialisation process,” he says. “It enabled us to form and develop relationships important for our survival.”
Other research has shown that listening to favourite music triggers the release of nitric oxide, which helps blood vessels maintain elasticity and function.
Many surgeons listen to music while operating, and it may be good for patients, too – even while they’re under anaesthetic.
A 2005 Swedish study of 75 patients having hernia surgery under general anaesthetic found that those who had music playing during their operation reported less pain afterwards.
This is thought to be because music lowers stress hormone levels and may trigger the release of oxytocin, a hormone that boosts relaxation and tolerance of pain.
A 2011 study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, found patients who listened to a range of ‘joyful’ music – including Bach and Louis Armstrong – while having a hip replacement needed less anaesthetic and had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
Listening to music may help the body defend itself from disease and infection, too. A review of 400 studies, published in 2013 by McGill University, in Canada, found music raised levels of natural ‘killer cells’. British and German research published in 2008 showed listening to 50 minutes of dance music raised levels of antibodies in volunteers’ bodies, probably because it reduced stress.
A study last month found that dementia patients who heard a live performance by a singer, then listened to her songs and those of others on MP3 players, communicated and remembered better.
Four weeks after the experiment, many were able to recall where they were, the time of day and people’s names. Their memory of recent and past events also showed improvement.
“Often music triggers a memory, and not just a song but maybe the time and place when the person heard it,” says Helen Odell-Miller, professor of music therapy at Anglia Ruskin University.
Professor Odell-Miller has also found making music using instruments, singing and clapping helps dementia patients communicate. When cognitive function declines, people may not find the words they need to express themselves, she says. “Music helps them find a new way to show how they are feeling, which improves relationships with their carers.”
Other research supports her findings. A trial published in the journal Aging & Mental Health in 2013 found dementia patients needed less antipsychotic and antidepressant medication after six weeks of music therapy and were less agitated than those who had standard care.
A study of twins published in January found those who played a musical instrument were 36 per cent less likely to develop dementia. One theory is learning an instrument keeps the brain ‘fitter’ and more able to resist age-related damage.
Music also improves heart rate variability – the intervals between heartbeats. “Heart rate variability is how our heart responds to stress,” says Dr Miller. “In a healthy person it tends to be quite variable – sometimes 60 beats per minute (bpm), sometimes 65, sometimes 70.
“Good heart rate variability is a predictor that you’re not in danger of developing a major heart problem in the near future.
“If it’s 90bpm all the time, the heart doesn’t have the ability to adapt to everyday stressors.”
This is especially risky if you’ve had a heart attack already, Dr Miller says.
He adds that no particular genre of music is best for the heart; rather, he simply advises listening to songs you love.
He recommends that patients listen to something they haven’t heard in a while so they get the ‘frisson effect’ – the feeling of a chill down your spine. ‘We think it’s that physiological effect that causes the most benefits.’
The frisson effect is associated with a release of dopamine, the brain chemical linked with feelings of reward and pleasure.
If you can’t get off to sleep, relaxing music really does help, according to an analysis of ten studies published in 2012 in the Journal of Nursing Studies.
Researchers found the use of music, such as classical tracks, was effective on short and long-term sleep disorders in adults.
Music is proving valuable for people who have difficulties in moving, such as those who are recovering from a stroke or have Parkinson’s disease.
“In Parkinson’s, there’s a problem with brain signals, so the person may want to move but the body doesn’t respond,” says Jessica Grahn, a neuroscientist studying music and the brain at Western University, Canada.
“Some patients show an incredible benefit when you start playing music. Their movements feel freer and they become ‘unstuck’.”
She says this may be partly because music triggers a release of dopamine, a chemical messenger which is depleted in Parkinson’s patients.
Music also seems to stimulate the regions of the brain that control movement.
Finnish research published in 2012 showed that stroke patients who listened to music every day improved their memory and attention.
The researchers speculated that this might be due to music lowering depression and stress, or increasing ‘neural plasticity’ – brain scans have revealed that ‘music, sound waves and vibration can cause changes in brain structures’, says Professor Odell-Miller.
Singing or playing a wind instrument can improve breathing and may particularly help those with lung conditions such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonar disease (COPD), an umbrella term for conditions including emphysema.
The Royal Brompton Hospital in London offers singing classes to patients with respiratory conditions.
Singing helps people learn to breathe more effectively, using the stomach muscles to take long, deep breaths.
A German study published in April this year also showed that people who played a wind instrument, particularly a brass one such as a trumpet, had a lower risk of developing obstructive sleep apnoea, where the soft tissues in the neck collapse during the night, causing snoring and temporary oxygen deprivation.
The researchers said playing the instruments strengthened the muscles in the upper airways.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11462377#
– Daily Mail
Stimulating nerves in your ear could improve the health of your heart, researchers have discovered.
A team at the University of Leeds used a standard TENS machine like those designed to relieve labour pains to apply electrical pulses to the tragus, the small raised flap at the front of the ear immediately in front of the ear canal. more here
For your
next team building session try singing! Researches from the University of Gothenburg have used Heart Rate Variability to measure what happens when people sing together. Their heart rate variability synchronises – which means they are performing as one – they are on the same wave length. Have a look at the video here
Why do negative comments and conversations stick with us so much longer than positive ones?
A critique from a boss, a disagreement with a colleague, a fight with a friend – the sting from any of these can make you forget a month’s worth of praise or accord. If you’ve been called lazy, careless, or a disappointment, you’re likely to remember and internalize it. It’s somehow easier to forget, or discount, all the times people have said you’re talented or conscientious or that you make them proud.more here
Presence has many interpretations and has been described in an article in Forbes as “the ability to project gravitas – confidence, poise under pressure and decisiveness. It is a persons speaking skills, assertiveness and the ability to read an audience or situation – and appearance.”
For me I feel it’s more than this. Someone has presence when they don’t have to say anything and you get a positive vibe or feeling from them. It emanates from their being. They are comfortable in their own skin, there is no pretence or exaggeration. That’s presence.
People who try to copy the physical traits of someone who has presence get caught out very quickly, the harder they try the worse it gets. They are perceived as a fake. They may have the knowledge and the skill but they don’t have that something that emanates from inside.
But where does it come from? The place that it comes from is the most powerful signal generator in the human body, it has its own neural network and generates hormones, it generates an electromagnetic field 60 times greater than the brain which radiates several feet outside the human body. It is of course the heart.
This electromagnetic field that radiates outside the body is the presence we feel – the vibe – and is a significant component of presence. The field can be coded either positively or negatively. We’ve all felt a bad vibe from someone – which doesn’t necessarily mean they are a bad person, it just means the coding of the electromagnetic field has emanated from the negative emotional state they are in. Alternatively, a positive emotional state will contribute to a positive electromagnetic field and a positive vibe.
If we want to develop presence, the types of positive states we may want to achieve include being passionate, enthusiastic, motivated, content, receptive or interested. The types of negative states we want to avoid are being angry, frustrated, anxious, apathetic, inattentive and detached.
So how do we do it? For most of us it can take a lot of work, but the work isn’t hard, it’s just constant. We need to work on three areas, namely our:
There are entire books written on each of these topics so I’m not even going to start discussing them here. But I want to share one technique developed by the team at Complete Coherence called MAP. This works particularly well with one on one conversations or small groups.
Executive presence is a personal journey that involves many intrinsic and extrinsic facets. So here’s a plan to get you started.
It doesn’t matter what your personality type is, your title or your physical stature, these things do not mean you automatically have presence. Our presence is ultimately determined by how well we grow and mature as a human beings.
I recently viewed an interesting TED presentation by Tom Wujec titled “The Three Ways the Brain Creates Meaning.” Wujec has this to say:
We make meaning by seeing, by an act of visual interrogation. The lessons for us are three-fold. First, use images to clarify what we’re trying to communicate. Secondly make those images interactive so that we engage much more fully. And the third is to augment memory by creating a visual persistence.
What does this mean for us in a presentation context? In the Extreme Presentation method we design presentations using five essential elements: Logic, Rhetoric, Graphics, Metrics and Politics. We then apply these five elements to one of two presentation idioms, Conference Room style or Ballroom Style.
I believe we can apply Wujec’s findings to the graphics element when working with the “Conference Room Style” idiom:
1. Use images to clarify what we’re trying to communicate.
We can do this by designing each page so that the page layout itself reinforces the main message of the page. Sample layouts that achieve this can be found here.
2. Make those images interactive so that we engage much more fully.
This is achieved by having all the information on one page and contained in or around an appropriate layout (see point 1) including charts. Most importantly this page is handed out, not projected. By doing this we can get the audience to absorb and adopt what we are presenting to them by allowing interactive discussion, which then gives them the opportunity to engage with our material and reflect on it. Here’s an example.
3. Augment memory by creating a visual persistence.
If you look at a well-lit scene and then close your eyes, you will notice that the image can still be sensed for some time after your eyes close. This is visual persistence. Under the Extreme Presentation Method we can determine whether the presentation will create visual persistence by applying the squint test.
Another way of applying these lessons is to think of a traditional painting, one that tells a story, such as “Shearing the Rams,” by Australian painter Tom Roberts, 1888.
Here Roberts depicts six men hunched over in a staggered pattern extending towards the back of a narrow sided room which belongs to a large shearing shed. By creating such a line, Roberts brings the viewer’s focus on the men’s positions, leaving the sheep secondary. Furthermore, he orientates the painting so that the viewer is directly in line with the shearers, practically hiding the sheep from view. But of even greater significance is the presence and position of the foreman to the right of the shearers. The foreman represents the shearing industry, which at the time imposed brutal and oppressive working conditions upon the shearers.
Hence in Roberts painting he uses images to clarify what he is trying to communicate – the struggle of the shearer not only with the rams but also against oppressive working conditions. He makes those images interactive so that we engage more fully through the different characters, their ages, their ranks and the painting’s location. And finally he creates a visual persistence through his artistry.
So the cognitive science research as described by Wujec seems to confirm what our great classical artists have always known. That is, we need to use images to clarify our message, enable audience interaction and create a visual persistence. This in turn further reinforces our confidence that the Extreme Presentation method provides the means by which this can be achieved in our business presentations.
n the environments of our distant ancestors, food was often scarce, and energy expenditure high. Three factors have all been powerful selective pressures in human evolution:
As our species evolved, individuals that were mentally sharp, physically fit, and disease or illness-free during periods of limited resource availability and could deal effectively with these energy stressors had an adaptive advantage.
Fasting, Exercise and Mental Effort for Health & Cognition | CogPsyLab.
Justin O'Brien 