Be it while facing an interview or an exam, while giving a presentation at work or a performance on stage, the one thing that you absolutely need is confidence. If you lack it, stress, anxiety and even depressive disorders are likely to plague you.

Representative image. Image by Annemiek Smegen from Pixabay

One of the most wholesome ways of giving your confidence levels a good boost is yoga. Practising yoga regularly can improve focus, clarity of mind, flexibility and posture while also strengthening your body. Its the perfect way of relieving stress and instilling a sense of empowerment - and thats everything you need to increase your confidence level.

Here are a few yoga asanas you should practise to give your confidence that much-needed boost.

This relaxing seated pose gently stretches your muscles and relieves pain, stress and fatigue simultaneously.

While stretching the entire body, this asana also works as a great stress-buster. You will definitely feel more energized after doing this one.

This asana gently stimulates all the abdominal organs while continuing with the relaxing stretch you did with the downward dog pose.

This asana is meant to turn you into a spiritual warrior who fights ignorance with confidence. Virabhadrasana also stretches the muscles of the entire body and opens up the joints.

Apart from relieving tension from the face and chest, and boosting immunity, Simhasana also makes you feel fierce and ready to face the world.

Nothing boosts confidence than mastering the art of relaxation, and this asana teaches you how to surrender and relax all the muscles of your body simultaneously.

For more information, read our article onYoga: Benefits, Types, Importance and Rules.

Health articles in Firstpost are written by myUpchar.com, Indias first and biggest resource for verified medical information. At myUpchar, researchers and journalists work with doctors to bring you information on all things health.

Updated Date: Feb 14, 2020 13:37:24 IST

Tags : Anxiety, Confidence, Downward Dog Pose, Mental Health, NewsTracker, Stress, Yoga, Yoga Asanas, Yoga ChildS Pose, Yoga Lion Pose, Yoga Warrior Pose

Read the original here:
6 yoga asanas that will give your confidence the ultimate boost - Firstpost

Dittmar notes how people may experience a wide range of emotions after a breathwork practice. Some people feel elated, some feel rather peaceful or neutral, while others can feel sadness or grief.

That's because breathwork can clear energy from your body that you didn't even realize you had. It's sort of like when you feel stressed, but you don't know what you exactly feel stressed about; breathwork can help clear that energy, even when you don't know how you're feeling, yourself.

Breathwork can also clear out energy that you might've picked up from others that you didn't even know you've been harboring. "It starts to clear out energy that is not yours, or energy that you've picked up, so you can better connect with your own energy," Dittmar explains.

That's why a lot of times people may vibrate or shake during their breathwork practice without knowing exactly why. "People just feel very activated, and a lot of them will say, 'What is this? What is that? What's happening?' My answer is that it's just your life force," Dittmar notes.

View original post here:

Is Breathwork The New Meditation? 5 Ways This Instructor Says It's More Useful - mindbodygreen.com

The phones screen turns a serene blue, and Calm, the leading mindfulness application, opens. At the very center, without capitalization or punctuation, small and faint, are the words take a deep breath.

That gives way to a menu. What brings you to Calm?

The app offers options to reduce anxiety, develop gratitude, build self esteem, even increase happiness.

The next screen offers a seven-day free trial. Once the trial has ended, the annual rate is $69.99, a small price for happiness.

Somewhere around 2010, according to experts and Google search data, the practice of mindfulness began an upward swing. In less than a decade, it has become the fastest-growing health trend in the United States, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mindfulness rules the online app store. The San Francisco-based Calm is valued at $1 billion, and its competitor Headspace at $350 million. (The industry as a whole has been estimated to be worth as much as $4 billion.) Meditation retreats are en vogue. Corporations offer access to mindfulness in the same way they do for gyms. Even the military uses mindfulness breathing techniques to boost soldiers performance.

But as with any Next Big Thing, there are reasons to be cautious. Some say this rush into mindfulness has outpaced the science and stripped it of its cultural context. All of this threatens to turn a tool for well-being, for situating oneself in the current moment, into a tool for standard American commercialism.

Around the same time mindfulness began its upward trajectory, Ronald Purser, a management professor at San Francisco State University, started to feel the familiar weight of doubt. Hed been doing a fair amount of corporate management training and consulting redesigning the workplace to work better, at least in theory, for everybody. I became somewhat disillusioned and disenchanted, he says. Even when we were making progress, trying to redesign work so employees would have more autonomy and decision-making, the management sort of pulled the plug on some of those experiments.

It was around this time, too, that Chade-Meng Tan, a software engineer at Google, gained notoriety for integrating mindfulness into Googles corporate culture through a series of in-house mindfulness seminars. In 2012, Tan turned those courses into a blockbuster book, Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace), and Purser found himself attending Tans very first public offering.

I became very disappointed by what I saw, just in terms of what the program was and how superficial it was, Purser says. I just saw this as part of the interest in behavioral science techniques as a way of yoking the interest or subjectivity of employees to corporate goals.

A year later, Purser published an essay with the Huffington Post. It was titled Beyond McMindfulness. Mindfulness meditation, he wrote, was making its way into schools, corporations, prisons, and government agencies including the U.S. military. Purser, a student of mindfulness for 40 years, wasnt knocking the practice but was wary of its growing reputation as a universal panacea for resolving almost every area of daily concern. Last year, Purser expanded on the essay and published a book titled McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality.

Early on in his book, he writes this: I do not question the value of adapting mindfulness for therapeutic use, nor do I deny that it can help people. What bothers me is how its promoters want things both ways: one minute, mindfulness is science, since thats what sells; the next, it stands for everything in Buddhism, since thats what makes it sound deep.

The issues Purser called out eight years ago have only grown with time. Rhetoric, he says, still outpaces results. The practice becomes increasingly decontextualized, meme-ified and gamified. Mindfulness becomes a cure for more and more our happiness, our anxiety, our pain, even world peace.

Its worth pausing a moment to define or at least try to define mindfulness.

At its very core, its deepest and truest roots, mindfulness is a Buddhist meditation technique. There are hundreds, probably thousands of different meditative techniques. This is only one of them, says Mushim Ikeda, a Buddhist meditation teacher. Traditionally, in the Buddhist scriptures, it is said that what we call mindfulness meditation was one of 40 different techniques that the historical Buddha, the one we call the Buddha, talked about. So it wasnt even his one and only meditation technique according to those scriptures.

She knows those scriptures well. Ikeda, who primarily teaches at the East Bay Meditation Center, describes herself as a socially engaged teacher a social justice activist, author, and diversity and inclusion facilitator.

She describes mindfulness meditation as a secular term in Buddhism, one thats also called insight meditation. This is a sort of awareness, she says, that is different from the awareness that we might call everyday awareness the sort we need to drive a car, or maintain a conversation, or use an ATM. She and others describe mindful awareness as spacious and nonjudgmental. Ikeda says, Its been said mindfulness only sees. It does not judge.

The most common technique involves closing the eyes and focusing on the breath and only the breath, moving other thoughts, and the thoughts that come with those thoughts, away and out.

Mindfulness as a secular, western therapeutic intervention did not begin in Silicon Valley. Rather, youd have to go back to 1979 and a man named Jon Kabat-Zinn and the founding of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Kabat-Zinn has studied the effects of what he dubbed mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR for short), on everything from brain function to skin disease.

Still, its hard to ignore Silicon Valleys latest role in spreading and expanding mindfulness in the pursuit of a different tech culture value, peak performance. There is Search Inside Yourself, the book that coincided with the movements growth spurt. There are Twitter co-founder Jack Dorseys much-publicized meditation retreats. (Black Mirror, the dystopian science fiction show, seemed to parody both him and the now-ubiquitous apps.) Recently, there was the dopamine fast, a pseudo-scientific dopamine reset by way of doing nothing. (One originator said he drew directly from Buddhist Vipassana meditation when he crafted the fast.)

The voices are soothing and smooth soft, but not quite a whisper. The cadence and diction perfect, gently pulling you along. Birds chatter in the background. Waves move gently to meet a beach. Or maybe a brook babbles as it pushes over and under and between river rocks.

Breathing in ... I am calm.

Breathing out ... I am at peace.

A chime rings, a signal that this 90-second meditation to calm anger has ended. Calm offers its congratulations.

The danger in this rapid evolution is that it threatens to turn a very old practice into a fad that overpromises and underdelivers.

Helen Weng has practiced Buddhist meditation for more than two decades. I was reading a lot of books about psychology because I was unhappy because high school is horrible, she says. And her father, who, along with her mother, had immigrated to the United States from Taiwan, could offer her books about Buddhist philosophy. The two came together. The Dalai Lamas teachings offered her an opportunity to cultivate her own well-being. I dont like the word happiness anymore, but you can use mental exercises to become more aware of your feeling states and your thoughts.

Now Weng works as a clinical psychologist with the psychiatry department at UCSF and a neuroscientist with the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine and the Neuroscape Center, both at UCSF as well. Her scientific work uses magnetic resonance imaging to measure the amount of oxygen in the blood that flows to the brain as people meditate. Essentially, she can track whether the meditator is actually focused on their breath or if their attention has wandered. And in her clinical work, she offers meditation as one of many possible therapeutic interventions.

Still, she calls the recent spread of mindfulness very freaky.

Im very proud that practices from eastern cultures and religions generate so much interest, she says. At the same time, mindfulness and its results are super hard to study. So much so that I just thought I was a bad scientist for a long time. Whats more, she says, meditation isnt always the right sort of behavioral therapy.

Im very disturbed by these messages that meditation basically cures everything or its good for everyone or theres universally very good positive effects. The effects are really moderate and subtle. Its not any better than any other kind of psychotherapy, she says. Part of it is cultural appropriation where its this magical, mystical thing that then people can say does all these things, and I think were still in the height of that and its going to take some time for things to settle down.

Medical students, she says, inevitably ask her how much time they have to commit to mindfulness to make it work. There are studies that show clear benefits to mindfulness. Weng points to one that indicated 30 minutes a day of compassion meditation for two weeks increased altruistic giving to strangers and brain responses to pictures of people suffering.

But the key here is consistency. What happens if you work out for 30 minutes just once? she asks. It benefits you a little bit. Thats good. But if you just do it once, its not going to have a long-term effect.

After the chime and the congratulations, the waves keep moving in and out, and a quote appears onscreen. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. (A quote sometimes attributed to Albert Einstein, but probably more correctly attributed to Narcotics Anonymous.) And in that moment, Calm reminds you that you really should turn on push notifications, in order to fully experience Calm. Decline and itll ask one more time about its mindfulness reminders.

Are you sure? Its hard to set aside time for yourself in our busy world without a little help.

Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors are jogging. Theyre tan, of course. Their shorts are short. Her blond hair is fanned out, so are his brown curls. She has a broad, blindingly white smile and a red handkerchief tied around her neck. His jacket is zipped down almost to his navel; his chest is hairy. And right beside them, a headline: Farrah & Lee & Everybodys Doing It: Stars Join The Jogging Craze.

This is the cover of the July 4, 1977, issue of People magazine. Alex Will, the chief strategy officer for Calm, the industry-leading mindfulness meditation app, likes to reference this cover when he talks about mindfulness. (Theres even a copy of the issue at the office.) To understand the future of mindfulness, just look to the past.

Mindfulness is becoming mainstream, Will says. People are starting to understand that taking care of the mind is just as important as taking care of the body. Meditation and mindfulness is one way to do that.

In some respects, Calm isnt doing anything that hasnt already been done. Before smartphones, one could buy a meditation CD, slip it into a home stereo and start counting breaths. The app just makes it more portable and more accessible than ever before. I think one of the reasons Ive been so successful is that it is a very low bar for someone to try and get into, Will says. There are short, two-minute long meditations, narrations to help with sleep, even a beginners guide to mindfulness. Similarly, if you want to go deeper, we have a 30-minute master class where you can learn how to break bad habits.

All of the content, Will says, is vetted by mindfulness instructors, and, now that the app is available in more than 100 countries, the programming is also run by people to make sure translations work. This is very nuanced, he says. Language really matters. The Calm app has also been part of various clinical studies in an attempt to back up the applications rhetoric.

Mindfulness, by the way, has already had its magazine-cover moment. Not quite 37 years after the jogging craze, Time magazine featured the Mindfulness Revolution on its Feb. 3, 2014, issue. A blond, fair-skinned model stands straight, hands at her sides, eyes closed, face slightly upward. And the headline: The science of finding focus in a stressed-out multitasking culture.

Mindfulness began to trend in large part because corporations embraced the practice as a way to help employees relieve stress. This is one of the cruxes of Pursers concerns that mindfulness is just a way to wring more productivity from employees, a sleight of hand that shifts the onus from the company to the worker.

In 2012, the year Chade-Meng Tan published Search Inside Yourself, the idea of offering mindfulness courses to employees still felt novel. The New York Times featured Tan and the course hed developed for Google employees a course that involved meditation, Tibetan brass bowls, stream-of-consciousness journaling and lots of emotional openness. Even then the course was framed as a way to help employees deal with their intense workplace no mention of toning down the intensity.

Eight years later, mindfulness courses are the rule, not the exception. Apple, Nike, HBO and Target have all offered some form of mindfulness training to employees. Aetna, the insurance provider, decided to offer mindfulness and other stress-relief activities (including dog petting) after an internal study found that the most stressed-out employees spent $1,500 more a year on health care. And if a company cant bring a trained expert on board, well, they can always give employees memberships to Calm or Headspace.

The Buddha taught that almost everything comes and goes, says Mushim Ikeda, the East Bay Meditation Center instructor. Its called impermanence or change. And health trends famously come and go. Its a product of our capitalist system.

One year, its a certain kind of berry thats going to cure everything. Another year, its mindfulness meditation thats going to cure everything. Five years from now, heaven only knows, itll be something else. Burnt toast who knows?

Ikeda offers a path forward, a path separate from capitalism, a path that encourages students to cultivate a practice in which they care for themselves so that they may, in turn, care for their communities. Its an approach based in social justice and altruism. And yet, she isnt dogmatic.

Mindfulness, Ikeda says, does not judge.

A person might use mindfulness to lower their blood pressure or achieve peak performance. A corporation might use mindfulness to paper over an inherently unjust and healthy system. All this, she says, is like using a Swiss Army knife for just one thing. Its not what the tool was intended to do, and its not all it can do.

Mindfulness is always mindful awareness of something, Ikeda says. Who knows what a given individual is going to do with it? Or what it will do for them?

An individual might, for instance, become mindfully aware of a broken system.

Ryan Kost is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rkost@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @RyanKost

Ryan Kost writes for The San Francisco Chronicles Culture Desk. Hes always on the look out for unexpected and untold story and loves covering the people and communities that dont always get a lot of press the stuff we miss, the stuff we look past. Sometimes we miss whole worlds and communities, even though we live right alongside them. A big part of what he tries to do is make all that a little more visible for our readers.

He loves getting tips and story ideas from readers, so dont hesitate to reach out. Previously, he lived in Portland, Ore. where he wrote for The Oregonian and The Associated Press, covering national, state and city politics. He helped launch PolitiFact Oregon, a fact-checking website aimed at keeping politicians truthful. Hes also worked at The Boston Globe, The Arizona Republic and The Tampa Tribune. Hes won a number of state and national awards.

BART

Election

BART

Valentine's Day

Jewish Bakeries

See the article here:

The (over) promise of the mindfulness revolution - San Francisco Chronicle

12 February 2020 JARRETT STEVENS

Chicago, US ViaRNS

Years ago, Southern Baptist theologian Albert Mohler wrote anarticlewarning Christians that Eastern meditation, which encourages participants to embrace silence and clear their minds, was not a means to spiritual growth". More than being just ineffective, he concluded, it was dangerous and an empty promise".

Coming from an evangelical upbringing, I can understand his concern. Ive heard plenty of religious leaders make similar claims, casting meditation as some sort of boogeyman wooing Christians away from the faith with pagan practices. In the world in which I was raised, meditation was not on the list of approved spiritual practices. We prayed and read and sang and journaled. But meditation was not on the menu.

PICTURE: Ian Stauffer/Unsplash.

But a few years back, I began to explore the practices of silence and meditation - not due to some sort of spiritual curiosity, but out of spiritual exhaustion. Our church was only a few years old, but the process of launching it had taken quite a toll on my wife and me. We were simultaneously full-time parents of young kids and full-time pastors of a young church, and the combination had left us undone.

In an attempt to spiritually revive myself, I tried all the practices in the toolbox inherited from my childhood. None of them worked. In my search for something new, I stumbled on something ancient. And meditation has become an indispensable part of my spiritual life ever since.

Silence and meditation have been a part of most religious traditions - most notably, among Hindus and Buddhists - since their inceptions. For this reason, some Western Christians assume that these practices will somehow make them less Christian or open the door to harmful spiritual forces. What many dont realise is that these practices have always been a part of our tradition, too.

The Bible uses the word meditation 23 times, the majority found in the book of Psalms. Ironically, one of my favorite verses has always been Psalm 46:10, in which God invites us to Be still and know that I am God. This passage has become the foundation of my meditative practice.

In the New Testament, we find Jesus practicing solitude and meditation as well. The Gospels regularly refer to him retreating to quiet places. Away from the noise. Away from the demands. Away to be alone and steep in silence with God.

These cues were picked up by many of our Christian forebears throughout the history of our faith as they integrated meditation into their own spiritual practice. Meditation and interior silence were central practices for the early Christians known as desert fathers and desert mothers who fled to the wilderness to form spiritual communities in the second century AD.

Meditation was prioritised by Christian monastic communities, which proliferated in the fourth and fifth centuries. It formed a centrepiece for the spirituality of medieval Christian mystics such as Teresa of Avila and Julian of Norwich. It was the 16th century reformer St John of the Cross who once declared that Silence is Gods first language. But then the Enlightenment happened, and Westerners were drawn to more scientific, systematic and structured ways of being Christian.

Jarrett Stevens and his book, 'Praying Through: Overcoming the Obstacles That Keep Us From God'. PICTURES: Aaron Bean Photo Film/Supplied

Western Christians have missed out on much since our abandonment of meditation, both spiritually and physically. It has deprived us of a helpful tool for connecting with the God in whom we place our faith, and it has robbed us of the practices many built-in health benefits. From lowered levels of stress to an increased immune system to helping curb and cope with depression and anxiety, meditation is as good for our bodies as it is for our spirits. The evidence of its effectiveness is abundant.

This is why, for the last few years now, I try to begin each day with a simple practice. I close my eyes and set an intention for my attention. I ground my feet into the floor, rest my hands open in my lap, and slow my breath. Rather than chase every thought out of my brain, I simply notice them and let them settle into their proper place on the horizon of my mind.

Now comes the counterintuitive part. I set aside everything that could distract me - even things that might be helpful at other times. I dont open my Bible, I dont play music, I dont listen to a spiritual podcast, and I dont speak any words. These are also wonderful ways to connect with God as well, but they can so easily distract me from just being still and knowing God. And then, for five to 10 minutes, I just sit in silence before the creator and sustainer of all things.

Some mornings, God speaks. Other days, God is silent. Ive learned to cherish both experiences and trust that they are just what I need at that moment.

Ive done this for a few years now, and I have yet to find what is so potentially dangerous about this practice. Instead, Ive found that it has been a powerful means for spiritual growth. It allows me to come to God just as I am. To show up without an agenda and simply be with God in the midst of all of my exhaustions, frustrations, longings and fears.

Meditation helps me to practice trusting that God is in control of every breath, and it reminds me that he doesnt need me to perform in order to experience his presence.

There will always be those who issue warnings against seemingly strange or uncommon spiritual practices. And many of them are well-intended. I can appreciate that. But if you want to overcome some of the obstacles that are keeping you from God, looking eastward might just be what helps you look upward.

Jarrett Stevens is pastor of Soul City Church in Chicago and author of Praying Through: Overcoming the Obstacles That Keep Us from God.

Read the original post:

SIGHT-SEEING: HOW A WESTERN MEGACHURCH PASTOR FELL IN LOVE WITH EASTERN MEDITATION - Sight Magazine

Meditation practices that help you stay calm and composed

Anger is just a 5 letter word, however, it has the ability to destroy your closest bonds, get in the way of your life and cause you emotional pain. One person's fit of rage can cause conflicts between nations and even cause social unrest. On a personal level, it can affect one's health andmental peace. Several research studies have revealed in the past that anger is like poison and it has long-term physicaleffects on a person's health.Which is why it becomes important for every person to work on their temperament.

While many might believe that anger is natural and people cannot control it, Mahayana Buddhism says the opposite and it suggests that a person can tame their anger through simple and easy self-controlling and self-restraining practices and meditation plays a huge role in it. As Buddha once said, "With practice, the quiet, patient mind can overcome the destructive flash of anger." Aperson can train his/her mind to deal with anger in the best way possible through meditation.

And, this guide will help you master the art of meditation that focuses on combating negative emotions likehate andanger.

This meditation practice bringspositive attitudinal changeandit systematically helps a person developthe qualitiesof compassion, love and kindness. It actsas a form of self-psychotherapy and it helps in healing the troubled mind. And, ithas immediate effects on one's old habituated negative patterns of mind.

In this meditation practice, a person has to develop the qualities of empathy, compassion and equanimity. And this is done throughvisualisation andreflection.

Now, move to someoneyou do not like or have difficulty dealing with. Repeatthe phrases for them with the same genuine feelings and love.

Next, extend your love and care for all sentient beings living across universes.

Lastly, visualise a happy world and say thisphraseout loud -May all sentient beings be happy, safe,healthy andlive joyously.

Note: Remembering all of these stepsis humanly not possible which is why people meditate in the presence of a guru who guides them through the meditation process. However, it's not always possible to meditate in the presence of a master which is why several guided meditation videos are uploaded online for our convenience.

A fact of life is that people are bothered by unmanageable emotional states as we live in pressured societies. However, only a few make efforts todevelop skills thatdeal with anger issues. I cannot stress enough on the fact that every person must becomea master of his or hermindand not let their minds overpower their decisions. And this can only be done through self-training.

Speaking of my personal experience, I began meditating at the age of 16 after reading in a book that certain meditation practices can help inanger management. When you are in your teens, your hormones tend to go haywire, making you short-tempered. When I experienced the same, I looked for every remedy to get rid of these negative emotions.And after reading several books and attending various meditation sessions at monasteries, I can finally say that it really helps. From being a rebellious unruly teenager to a compassionate woman, meditation helped me achieve my biggest milestone in life. And,I hope it helps you too.

View post:

Tame your temper by mastering the art of meditation - Times Now

Mindful practices like meditation have been shown to reduce stress and improve our ability to concentrate and live in the moment (even Barbie is into it). But how do you find the time to unplug in an always-on world where multitasking is the norm? Enter the mindful manicure, intended to make you look and feel good with solid zoning-out time and guided meditation while you get you pampered.

"I think meditation can bring us back to the ground base from overthinking or overwhelming; it reconnects us with ourselves and with the present moment," says Amy Lin, founder of Sundays in New York City, which offers a custom guided meditation + manicure. A meditation manicure, she says, is an effortless way to meditate because you're expected to sit for 20 minutes anyway.

Here are a few mindful manis to get your hands on...

Photo via Sundays

Rock a set of headphones and choose from six short, easy-to-follow guided meditation programs from "Grounding" to "Gratitude" while being treated to a natural soak, cuticle work, buffing, shaping and an essential oil treatment, followed by a couple brushes of nontoxic, 10-free, vegan and cruelty-free polish. The salon's mindful organic tea bar, self-love letter-writing station, and warm and welcoming Danish hygge-inspired design enhance the experience. "Sometimes, you just need a little time with yourself to receive clarity, a moment of rest or escape, and then you can keep going," says Lin.

Photo via SpaRitual

The Sound of Color manicure pairs 36 vegan SpaRitual polish shades with curated guided meditation sessions from Unplug Meditation, offered at several spas around the country, including Vdara Hotel & Spa in Las Vegas and Yellowstone Club in Bozeman, MT. Themed programs delivered by renowned meditation gurus range from "Self-Compassion" to "Peaceful Day" and "My Ideal Life." Choose your shade and meditation program on the customized app, slip on the headphones and prepare to enter into a state of total zen.

Photo via Bellacures

If it's total escapism you're after, Bellacures in Beverly Hills, CA, offers a virtual reality mani/pedi that transports you to a beautiful beach on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai, a rushing waterfall in Iceland or a lush forest in rural New York via a VR headset and a treatment of custom-scented lotions and scrubs. Save on your travel budget!

View original post here:

Treat Your Body and Soul With a Mindful Manicure - Brit + Co

Text Size: A- A+

Bengaluru: A collaborative study between Victoria University in Melbourne and Queens University in Belfast found that meditation leads to better management of stress and improves mental health outcomes. Researchers performed studies on a part of the human endocrine system that isnt well studied in the context of meditation.

The endocrine system is the network of glands spread out in the human body, which produce hormones to regulate metabolism, growth, sexual functions, mood, sleep, and development. They are responsible for every cell and organ function.

The study found a connection between meditation, the endocrine system, and general well-being by analysing and reviewing a large number of existing studies on meditation and hormones. The results were published this week in the journal Cell Press.

Through the comprehensive literature review, we found that there is a clear link between meditation and stress reduction, said Chantal Ski, an author on the paper at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Queens University, in a statement. We focused on studies that analysed how meditation affected the endocrine system and a number of interconnected systems that regulate stress.

Whilst it is intriguing that various meditation practices appear to induce changes in endocrine function, and consequently be associated with improvements in mental health, the underlying associations and mechanisms that might operate are unclear, though likely involve psychological, physiological, and neurological processes, said Michaela Pascoe of Institute for Health and Sport at Victoria University, and lead author of the paper.

Also read: How Modi govt is helping scientists decode health benefits of yoga and meditation

Meditation is becoming an increasingly popular form of personal mental health management, supported not only by anecdotal evidence about managing emotions, but also through evidence from a growing body of studies. Many of these studies have analysed the effect on the hypothalamicpituitaryadrenal (HPA) axis, a network of three glands located near our brains and kidneys. The hypothalamus is a regulator that tells the pituitary gland when to produce growth hormones, and the adrenal gland is responsible for the flight-or-fight response.

The new study also analysed the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone (RAA) system of glands, which regulates blood pressure and fluid balance. The team found that there is a high likelihood that meditation physically affects the RAA system.

Most pertinently, researchers discovered that the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis linked to depression and anxiety could also be influenced. This means that the thyroid hormone production is affected by meditation, which in turn can help manage depression, anxiety, and stress.

These learnings indicate that one can help develop a tailored meditation practice that can greatly benefit individuals or groups of people suffering from similar mental and emotional health issues.

Also read: Bosses can help reduce employee stress and burnout

ThePrint is now on Telegram. For the best reports & opinion on politics, governance and more, subscribe to ThePrint on Telegram.

See the original post here:

New study supports theory that meditation can help manage stress, depression, anxiety - ThePrint

Christen Press is very good at soccer. Soccer hasnt always been good to her. Shes been transparent about the stress it used to cause her, how she would beat herself up and yell at her teammates over the game as a college player at Stanford. Shes gone so far as to say flat out I did not enjoy playing soccer when she was in college. The awful days, shes called them. Its hard to imagine Press that way now, soft-spoken as she is when she comes through the mixed zone.

Its not a secret that Press has used Vedic meditation to help manage her stress, a process shes described as a twice-daily practice of sitting down for 20 minutes and focusing on a mantra, which in turn helps her control how she reacts to her stressors. Shes spoken several times about how the practice has helped her find a measure of peace. But she doesnt do it to be a better soccer player, at least not in a linear cause-and-effect way.

I dont think I really think about those things like going hand in hand, she said after the United States Olympic qualifying semifinal against Mexico, a game in which she put an emphatic exclamation mark on her role with the team. Her chip from inside the box was an audacious bit of skill, thrown off with deceptive casualness in the heat of the moment. Press said that it was a combination of instinct and considered thought for her, putting together everything that made her decide a chip was her best shot selection. Sometimes the game slows down a bit, especially in the box, she said, astonishing when you consider the game clock doesnt have time to tick off two seconds before shes chipping her own rebounded shot.

I think Vedic meditation teaches you its the long game, and its not necessarily about a result, she said. So I think if you go into the practice thinking, oh I want to be better at transitioning mentality, so I want to be scoring more goals, its not going to work. You kind of practice Vedic meditation to learn about yourself and learn about the world and connect with the universe and your humanity and the benefits just flow naturally from there.

Press is the only one who can say for sure if shes found that universal connection, and what that might feel like, particularly for someone whos recently gone through a tremendous loss, as Press mother passed away in 2019 only months after a cancer diagnosis. But a more local connection, one with the other 10 players on the field, thats become quite evident, spotlighted by Press golden ball award for most valuable player at Olympic qualifying.

That wasnt easy to come by either, though. Press said that being subbed into a game, particularly when the stakes are high, used to be disconcerting. Youre supposed to be fresh but you feel like you cant suck in a breath, she said. I think that focus and consistency are very challenging to bring in this environment, especially when youre playing multiple positions and multiple roles. Its so challenging coming off the bench because its like kind of getting shot out of a rocket and the game is like, everyones so emotional and theyre in it and youre not really feeling that until youre on the field.

Clearly, Press has done a lot of work to be able to make such a mental adjustment on the fly considering her ability to immediately impact games. When she subbed on against Mexico in the semifinal, it took approximately five minutes for her to score. After the game, Press agreed that subbing on was like trying to merge on a freeway where the cars were all going 100 miles per hour. On hearing that comparison at practice the day after the semifinal, Megan Rapinoe seemed nonplussed. Thats interesting she says that because I feel like shes a Ferrari getting on the freeway, said Rapinoe. And indeed, against Mexico, Press went from zero to 60 like she was racing Vin Diesel for pink slips.

There is a certain Alex-Morgan shaped gap in the US offense that Vlatko Andonovski has been attempting to fill, with varying levels of success. Press is now a key part of that equation, varying between starter and sub over the course of qualifying. But her performance didnt vary at all, regardless of the minutes she actually got. She mostly stayed wide, pulling defenders away from the goal, sometimes searching for the open teammate in front of net, often taking on challenges herself. Press has an extraordinary ability to dig out space for herself to shoot, particularly at an angle in very tight quarters. Its a jab-jab-haymaker combo with knockout timing that has served her well you may know its coming, but plenty of defenders have been helpless to stop it.

Press hasnt necessarily ramped up the intensity over the course of Olympic qualifying, but thats only because shes been playing at this level for some time now. It often seems as though shes playing like not just her starter spot, but her entire national team career is at stake. So you could be forgiven for thinking her stress levels have increased from college but Press says she has a handle on it, saying several times that she hopes even better performances are yet to come from her.

That does seem inherently contradictory to her other statements about not searching for a result and learning to let go of the expectations she holds for herself. Press has spent a lot of time in one of the most competitive sporting environments on earth, a place where by necessity there has to be a lot of comparison to a standard, a fact which doesnt escape her. I think in Western philosophy and especially in sport, you get a sense that you have to want to be the best in order to be the best, she said after the final game against Canada. She had just received her golden ball trophy for most valuable player in the tournament, a trophy which she passed to her beaming father in the stands.

I actually think that a lot of things about this sport feed your ego and the ego is evil, said Press, acknowledging a question about how wanting and desire can become destructive. So I actually think all the time that my job is to strive for excellence, to strive to be a great teammate, to be kind, and to be humble no matter what happens for me. And sometimes that is challenging.

In 2015, Press wrote an article for The Players Tribune just before the World Cup. She ruminated on greatness, and existing in a constant state of pursuing greatness. How can you be content if you are always in pursuit of something, always restless, always looking forward to what comes next? Press answer was simple and short: you cant. So you have to accept that existing in this state is all there is. Ive actually had to let go of that, she said, And just think that I want to be my best and that I never will be. And so then you have to find contentment in striving to do so.

Christen Press may have found peace accepting that she will never truly be great, by whatever metric she uses for greatness. But by the standards of what the US womens team needs her to be, she already is great. Or as Megan Rapinoe might put it, Press is a Ferrari among the Ford Fiestas, lapping everyone on the race course, and fans are definitely at peace with that.

Read the original post:

Christen Press doesnt have it all figured out - All For XI

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. Some of the smartest people in history lived by those words long before they adorned Instagram posts. But in todays busy world, we need to consider the most effective ways of incorporating daily habits into our already-packed schedules especially when it comes to longer-term goals like learning new things. Its all about small, daily changes that can make all the difference.

So if you want to become smarter without taking a full course or reading dozens of books, embrace these six daily habits, below. Theyll help increase your focus, fast track your learning and boost your brainpower in as much time as reading an email or scrolling through your feed.

Taking a few minutes to visually illustrate your thoughts on a piece of paper or whiteboard a great daily habit to implement will flex your intellect and make you better at taking in complicated concepts and new knowledge. Mind mapping is a powerful tool that helps simplify complex issues for easier understanding, boosts retention, ignites creativity and enables meaningful learning, says Adrian Shepherd, best-selling author and productivity expert, and consultant.

Youve heard all about the health benefits of meditation. But did you know it could also make you sharper? Our world today is noisy, which is why it pays more than ever to have quiet time to reflect. Meditation helps reduce stress, improves focus and memory, lengthens attention span and puts us in the right frame of mind to succeed, he says.

You may think that there is no point in exercising for five minutes, but getting your blood flowing first thing in the morning with bodyweight exercises like push-ups, planks or burpees has cognitive benefits. Not only are [these exercises] effective to build muscle, but they also release endorphins into the bloodstream, which helps our brain operate at optimum levels, says Shepherd.

Shepherd says there is magic in writing. Every successful person I know loves to work on paper. Later, those ideas should get digitally transferred to allow for ease of distribution, back-up, and alteration.

Carry a notebook with you to jot down ideas as they come up and youll find yourself feeling more inspired and creative over time. Make quick lists as you think of tasks and action items: Putting looming to-dos on paper declutters your mind, giving it more space for processing new learnings. Youll see that this daily habit can have a great effect.

Apps like Blinkistprovide condensed book summaries focused on key takeaways and insights that you can get through in less than 15 minutes. There are books that are filled to the brim with powerful ideas. However, some contain just a few nuggets of wisdom. Thats why I have invested in getting book summaries, says Shepherd.

You can also use book summaries to inform your evergrowing reading list and select which reads are going to be worth your time and attention.

Using a timer takes a second, but it can save you hours of work in the long run time that you could spend on attending a compelling conference, having a thought-provoking conversation or listening to an insightful podcast. Shepherd recommends setting a countdown timer for 60 minutes and aiming to focus on a single item of work during that hour.

In todays world, we are distracted on average every three minutes. However, it takes 11 minutes for us to regain concentration. That means we are never able to get into a state of concentration. Thats where a timer comes in handy.

Incorporating these daily habits into your busy life might be what you need to level-up, become smarter and make your day-to-day much more efficient. Try it out for yourself.

Read the original here:

5 minute daily habits that will make you smarter - Ladders

Canadian clinical psychologist

Jordan Bernt Peterson (born June 12, 1962) is a Canadian clinical psychologist and a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. His main areas of study are in abnormal, social, and personality psychology,[1] with a particular interest in the psychology of religious and ideological belief[2] and the assessment and improvement of personality and performance.[3]

Peterson has bachelor's degrees in political science and psychology from the University of Alberta and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from McGill University. He was a post-doctoral fellow at McGill from 1991 to 1993 before moving to Harvard University, where he was an assistant professor in the psychology department.[4][5] In 1998, he returned to Canada to become a faculty member in the psychology department at the University of Toronto, where he eventually became a full professor.[6]

Peterson's first book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (1999), examined several academic fields to describe the structure of systems of beliefs and myths, their role in the regulation of emotion, creation of meaning, and several other topics such as motivation for genocide.[7][8][9] His second book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, was published in January 2018.[4][10][11]

In 2016, Peterson released a series[12] of YouTube videos criticizing political correctness and the Canadian government's Bill C-16, "An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code". The act added "gender identity and expression" as a prohibited ground of discrimination,[a][13] which Peterson characterised as an introduction of compelled speech into law,[14][15][16] although legal experts have disagreed.[17] He subsequently received significant media coverage, attracting both support and criticism.[4][10][11] Several writers have associated Peterson with an "Intellectual Dark Web".[18][19][20][21][22]

Peterson was born on June 12, 1962.[23] He grew up in Fairview, Alberta, a small town northwest of his birthplace (Edmonton).[24] He was the eldest of three children born to Walter and Beverley Peterson. Beverley was a librarian at the Fairview campus of Grande Prairie Regional College, and Walter was a school teacher.[25][26] His middle name is Bernt ( BAIR-nt),[27] after his Norwegian great-grandfather.[28]

When Peterson was 13, he was introduced to the writings of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Ayn Rand by his school librarian Sandy Notley (the mother of Rachel Notley, leader of the Alberta New Democratic Party and 17th Premier of Alberta).[29] He worked for the New Democratic Party (NDP) throughout his teenage years, but grew disenchanted with the party. He saw his experience of disillusionment resonating with Orwell's diagnosis, in The Road to Wigan Pier, of "the intellectual, tweed-wearing middle-class socialist" who "didn't like the poor; they just hated the rich".[25][30] He left the NDP at age 18.[31]

After graduating from Fairview High School in 1979, Peterson entered the Grande Prairie Regional College to study political science and English literature.[2] He later transferred to the University of Alberta, where he completed his B.A. in political science in 1982.[31] Afterwards, he took a year off to visit Europe. There he began studying the psychological origins of the Cold War, 20th-century European totalitarianism,[2][32] and the works of Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,[25] and Fyodor Dostoevsky.[32] He then returned to the University of Alberta and received a B.A. in psychology in 1984.[33] In 1985, he moved to Montreal to attend McGill University. He earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology under the supervision of Robert O. Pihl in 1991, and remained as a post-doctoral fellow at McGill's Douglas Hospital until June 1993, working with Pihl and Maurice Dongier.[2][34]

From July 1993 to June 1998,[1] Peterson lived in Arlington, Massachusetts, while teaching and conducting research at Harvard University as an assistant professor in the psychology department. During his time at Harvard, he studied aggression arising from drug and alcohol abuse and supervised a number of unconventional thesis proposals.[31] Two former PhD students, Shelley Carson, a psychologist and teacher from Harvard, and author Gregg Hurwitz recalled that Peterson's lectures were already highly admired by the students.[4] In July 1998, he returned to Canada and eventually became a full professor at the University of Toronto.[1][33]

Peterson's areas of study and research are in the fields of psychopharmacology, abnormal, neuro, clinical, personality, social, industrial and organizational,[1]religious, ideological,[2]political, and creativity psychology.[3] Peterson has authored or co-authored more than a hundred academic papers[35] and has been cited almost 8,000 times as of mid-2017.[36]

For most of his career, Peterson had maintained a clinical practice, seeing about 20 people a week. He had been active on social media, and in September 2016 he released a series of videos in which he criticized Bill C-16.[12][29][37] As a result of new projects, he decided to put the clinical practice on hold in 2017[10] and temporarily stopped teaching as of 2018.[26][38]

In June 2018, Peterson debated with Sam Harris at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver while moderated by Bret Weinstein, and again in July at the 3Arena in Dublin and The O2 Arena in London while moderated by Douglas Murray, over the topic of religion and God.[39][40] In April 2019, Peterson debated professor Slavoj iek at the Sony Centre in Toronto over happiness under capitalism versus Marxism.[41][42]

In 1999 Routledge published Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. The book, which took Peterson 13 years to complete, describes a comprehensive theory about how people construct meaning, form beliefs and make narratives using ideas from various fields including mythology, religion, literature, philosophy and psychology in accordance to the modern scientific understanding of how the brain functions.[31][5][43]

According to Peterson, his main goal was to examine why both individuals and groups participate in social conflict, explore the reasoning and motivation individuals take to support their belief systems (i.e. ideological identification[31]) that eventually results in killing and pathological atrocities like the Gulag, the Auschwitz concentration camp and the Rwandan genocide.[31][5][43] He considers that an "analysis of the world's religious ideas might allow us to describe our essential morality and eventually develop a universal system of morality".[43]Jungian archetypes play an important role in the book.[4]

In 2004, a 13-part TV series based on Peterson's book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief aired on TVOntario.[25][33][44]

In January 2018, Penguin Random House published Peterson's second book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. The work contains abstract ethical principles about life, in a more accessible style than Maps of Meaning.[10][4][11] To promote the book, Peterson went on a world tour.[45][46][47] As part of the tour, Peterson was interviewed in the UK by Cathy Newman on Channel 4 News which generated considerable attention.[48][49][50] The book topped bestselling lists in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the US, and the United Kingdom.[51][52][53] As of January 2019, Peterson is working on a sequel to 12 Rules for Life.[54]

In 2013, Peterson began recording his lectures ("Personality and Its Transformations", "Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief"[55]) and uploading them to YouTube. His YouTube channel has gathered more than 1.8 million subscribers and his videos have received more than 65 million views as of August 2018.[37][56] In January 2017, he hired a production team to film his psychology lectures at the University of Toronto. He used funds received on the crowdfunding website Patreon after he became embroiled in the Bill C-16 controversy in September 2016. His funding through Patreon has increased from $1,000 per month in August 2016 to $14,000 by January 2017, more than $50,000 by July 2017, and over $80,000 by May 2018.[29][37][57][58] In December 2018, Peterson decided to delete his Patreon account after Patreon's bans of political personalities who were violating Patreon's terms of service regarding hate speech.[59][60]

Peterson has appeared on many podcasts, conversational series, as well other online shows.[56][61] In December 2016, Peterson started his own podcast, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, which has included academic guests such as Camille Paglia, Martin Daly, and James W. Pennebaker.[62] On his YouTube channel he has interviewed Stephen Hicks, Richard J. Haier, and Jonathan Haidt among others.[62] In March 2019, the podcast joined the Westwood One network with Peterson's daughter as a co-host on some episodes.[63] Peterson supported engineer James Damore in his action against Google.[11]

In May 2017, Peterson began The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories,[64] a series of live theatre lectures, also published as podcasts, in which he analyzes archetypal narratives in Book of Genesis as patterns of behavior ostensibly vital for personal, social and cultural stability.[11]

In March 2019, Peterson had his invitation of a visiting fellowship at Cambridge University rescinded. He had previously said that the fellowship would give him "the opportunity to talk to religious experts of all types for a couple of months", and that the new lectures would have been on Book of Exodus.[65] A spokesperson for the University said that there was "no place" for anyone who could not uphold the "inclusive environment" of the university.[66] After a week, the vice-chancellor Stephen Toope explained that it was due to a photograph with a man wearing an Islamophobic shirt.[67] The Cambridge University Students' Union released a statement of relief, considering the invitation "a political act to ... legitimise figures such as Peterson" and that his work and views are not "representative of the student body".[68] Peterson called the decision a "deeply unfortunate ... error of judgement" and expressed regret that the Divinity Faculty had submitted to an "ill-informed, ignorant and ideologically-addled mob".[69][70]

In 2005, Peterson and his colleagues set up a for-profit company to provide and produce a writing therapy program with a series of online writing exercises.[71] Titled the Self Authoring Suite,[25] it includes the Past Authoring Program (a guided autobiography); two Present Authoring Programs which allow the participant to analyze their personality faults and virtues in terms of the Big Five personality model; and the Future Authoring Program which guides participants through the process of planning their desired futures. The latter program was used with McGill University undergraduates on academic probation to improve their grades, as well as since 2011 at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University.[72][73] The programs were developed partially from research by James W. Pennebaker at the University of Texas at Austin and Gary Latham at the Rotman School of Management of the University of Toronto.[4] Peterson's co-authored 2015 study showed significant reduction in ethnic and gender-group differences in performance, especially among ethnic minority male students.[73][74] According to Peterson, more than 10,000 students have used the program as of January 2017, with drop-out rates decreasing by 25% and GPAs rising by 20%.[25]

Peterson has characterized himself as a "classic British liberal",[32][75][76] and as a "traditionalist".[77] He has stated that he is commonly mistaken to be right wing,[56] as, for example, The New York Times has described Peterson as "conservative-leaning",[78] and The Washington Post has described him as "conservative".[79] Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Yoram Hazony stated, "The startling success of his elevated arguments for the importance of order has made him the most significant conservative thinker to appear in the English-speaking world in a generation."[80] Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs opines that Peterson has been seen "as everything from a fascist apologist to an Enlightenment liberal, because his vacuous words are a kind of Rorschach test onto which countless interpretations can be projected."[81]

Peterson's critiques of political correctness range over issues such as postmodernism, postmodern feminism, white privilege, cultural appropriation, and environmentalism.[61][82]

Writing in the National Post, Chris Selley said Peterson's opponents had "underestimated the fury being inspired by modern preoccupations like white privilege and cultural appropriation, and by the marginalization, shouting down or outright cancellation of other viewpoints in polite society's institutions",[83] while in The Spectator, Tim Lott stated Peterson became "an outspoken critic of mainstream academia".[32] Peterson's social media presence has magnified the impact of these views; Simona Chiose of The Globe and Mail noted: "few University of Toronto professors in the humanities and social sciences have enjoyed the global name recognition Prof. Peterson has won".[37]

According to his studyconducted with one of his students, Christine Brophyof the relationship between political belief and personality, political correctness exists in two types: "PC-egalitarianism" and "PC-authoritarianism", which is a manifestation of "offense sensitivity".[84] Jason McBride claims Peterson places classical liberals in the first type, and places so-called social justice warriors, who he says "weaponize compassion", in the second.[25][2] The study also found an overlap between PC-authoritarians and right-wing authoritarians.[84]

Peterson considers that the universities should be held as among the most responsible for the wave of political correctness which appeared in North America and Europe.[37] According to Peterson, he watched the rise of political correctness on campuses since the early 1990s. In his view the humanities have become corrupt and less reliant on science. Instead of "intelligent conversation, we are having an ideological conversation". From his own experience as a professor, he states that the students who are coming to his classes are uneducated about and unaware of the mass exterminations and other crimes against humanity perpetrated by Stalinism and Maoism, which were not given the same attention as fascism and Nazism. He also says that "instead of being ennobled or inculcated into the proper culture, the last vestiges of structure are stripped from [the students] by post-modernism and neo-Marxism, which defines everything in terms of relativism and power".[32][85][86]

Peterson, 2017[85]

Peterson says that postmodern philosophers and sociologists since the 1960s[82] have built upon and extended certain core tenets of Marxism and communism while simultaneously appearing to disavow both ideologies. He says that it is difficult to understand contemporary Western society without considering the influence of a strain of postmodernist thought that migrated from France to the United States through the English department at Yale University. He states that certain academics in the humanities:[85]

... started to play a sleight of hand, and instead of pitting the proletariat, the working class, against the bourgeois, they started to pit the oppressed against the oppressor. That opened up the avenue to identifying any number of groups as oppressed and oppressor and to continue the same narrative under a different name.... The people who hold this doctrinethis radical, postmodern, communitarian doctrine that makes racial identity or sexual identity or gender identity or some kind of group identity paramountthey've got control over most low-to-mid level bureaucratic structures, and many governments as well.

Peterson's perspective on the influence of postmodernism on North American humanities departments has been compared to Cultural Marxist conspiracy theories.[51][87][88][89]

Peterson says that "disciplines like women's studies should be defunded" and advises freshman students to avoid subjects like sociology, anthropology, English literature, ethnic studies, and racial studies, as well as other fields of study he believes are corrupted by the neo-Marxist ideology.[90][91][92] He says that these fields, under the pretense of academic inquiry, propagate unscientific methods, fraudulent peer-review processes for academic journals, publications that garner zero citations,[93] cult-like behaviour,[91]safe-spaces,[90] and radical left-wing political activism for students.[82] Peterson has proposed launching a website which uses artificial intelligence to identify and showcase the amount of ideologization in specific courses. He announced in November 2017 that he had temporarily postponed the project as "it might add excessively to current polarization".[94][95]

Peterson has criticized the use of the term "white privilege", stating that "being called out on their white privilege, identified with a particular racial group and then made to suffer the consequences of the existence of that racial group and its hypothetical crimes, and that sort of thing has to come to a stop.... [It's] racist in its extreme".[82] In regard to identity politics, while the "left plays them on behalf of the oppressed, let's say, and the right tends to play them on behalf of nationalism and ethnic pride", he considers them "equally dangerous" and that what should be emphasized instead are individualism and individual responsibility.[96] He has also been prominent in the debate about cultural appropriation, stating the concept promotes self-censorship in society and journalism.[97]

On September 27, 2016, Peterson released the first installment of a three-part lecture video series, entitled "Professor against political correctness: Part I: Fear and the Law".[29][14] In the video, he stated he would not use the preferred gender pronouns of students and faculty, saying it fell under compelled speech, and announced his objection to the Canadian government's Bill C-16, which proposed to add "gender identity or expression" as a prohibited ground of discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act, and to similarly expand the definitions of promoting genocide and publicly inciting hatred in the hate speech laws in Canada.[14][98]

He stated that his objection to the bill was based on potential free-speech implications if the Criminal Code is amended, as he claimed he could then be prosecuted under provincial human-rights laws if he refuses to call a transgender student or faculty member by the individual's preferred pronoun.[15] Furthermore, he argued that the new amendments, paired with section 46.3 of the Ontario Human Rights Code, would make it possible for employers and organizations to be subject to punishment under the code if any employee or associate says anything that can be construed "directly or indirectly" as offensive, "whether intentionally or unintentionally".[16] Other academics and lawyers challenged Peterson's interpretation of C-16.[15]

The series of videos drew criticism from transgender activists, faculty, and labour unions; critics accused Peterson of "helping to foster a climate for hate to thrive" and of "fundamentally mischaracterising" the law.[99][29] Protests erupted on campus, some including violence, and the controversy attracted international media attention.[100][101][102] When asked in September 2016 if he would comply with the request of a student to use a preferred pronoun, Peterson said "it would depend on how they asked me[...] If I could detect that there was a chip on their shoulder, or that they were [asking me] with political motives, then I would probably say no[...] If I could have a conversation like the one we're having now, I could probably meet them on an equal level".[102] Two months later, the National Post published an op-ed by Peterson in which he elaborated on his opposition to the bill and explained why he publicly made a stand against it:

I will never use words I hate, like the trendy and artificially constructed words "zhe" and "zher." These words are at the vanguard of a post-modern, radical leftist ideology that I detest, and which is, in my professional opinion, frighteningly similar to the Marxist doctrines that killed at least 100 million people in the 20th century.

I have been studying authoritarianism on the right and the left for 35 years. I wrote a book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, on the topic, which explores how ideologies hijack language and belief. As a result of my studies, I have come to believe that Marxism is a murderous ideology. I believe its practitioners in modern universities should be ashamed of themselves for continuing to promote such vicious, untenable and anti-human ideas, and for indoctrinating their students with these beliefs. I am therefore not going to mouth Marxist words. That would make me a puppet of the radical left, and that is not going to happen. Period.[103]

In response to the controversy, academic administrators at the University of Toronto sent Peterson two letters of warning, one noting that free speech had to be made in accordance with human rights legislation and the other adding that his refusal to use the preferred personal pronouns of students and faculty upon request could constitute discrimination. Peterson speculated that these warning letters were leading up to formal disciplinary action against him, but in December the university assured him that he would retain his professorship, and in January 2017 he returned to teach his psychology class at the University of Toronto.[104][29]

In February 2017, Maxime Bernier, candidate for leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, stated that he shifted his position on Bill C-16, from support to opposition, after meeting with Peterson and discussing it.[105] Peterson's analysis of the bill was also frequently cited by senators who were opposed to its passage.[106] In April 2017, Peterson was denied a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant for the first time in his career, which he interpreted as retaliation for his statements regarding Bill C-16.[36] A media-relations adviser for SSHRC said, "Committees assess only the information contained in the application."[107] In response, Rebel News launched an Indiegogo campaign on Peterson's behalf.[108] The campaign raised C$195,000 by its end on May 6, equivalent to over two years of research funding.[109] In May 2017, Peterson spoke against Bill C-16 at a Canadian Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs hearing. He was one of 24 witnesses who were invited to speak about the bill.[106]

In November 2017, Lindsay Shepherd, the teaching assistant in a Wilfrid Laurier University first-year communications course, was censured by her professors for showing a segment of The Agenda, which featured Peterson debating Bill C-16 with another professor, during a classroom discussion about pronouns.[110][111][112] The reasons given for the censure included the clip creating a "toxic climate", being compared to a "speech by Hitler",[30] and being itself in violation of Bill C-16.[113] The censure was later withdrawn and both the professors and the university formally apologized.[114][115][116] The events were criticized by Peterson, as well as several newspaper editorial boards[117][118][119] and national newspaper columnists[120][121][122][123] as an example of the suppression of free speech on university campuses. In June 2018, Peterson filed a $1.5-million lawsuit against Wilfrid Laurier University, arguing that three staff members of the university had maliciously defamed him by making negative comments about him behind closed doors.[124] As of September2018,[update] Wilfrid Laurier had asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, saying that it was ironic for a purported advocate of free speech to attempt to curtail free speech.[125]

Peterson has argued that there is an ongoing "crisis of masculinity" and "backlash against masculinity" in which the "masculine spirit is under assault".[24][126][127][128] He has argued that feminism and policies such as no-fault divorce have had adverse effects on gender relations and have destabilized society.[126] He has argued that the left characterises the existing societal hierarchy as an "oppressive patriarchy" but "dont want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence."[24] Peterson has said that men without partners are likely to become violent, and has noted that male violence is reduced in societies wherein monogamy is a social norm.[24][126] He has attributed the rise of Donald Trump and far-right European politicians to what he says is a negative reaction to a push to "feminize" men, saying "If men are pushed too hard to feminize they will become more and more interested in harsh, fascist political ideology."[129] He attracted considerable attention over a 2018 Channel 4 interview where he clashed with interviewer Cathy Newman on the topic of the gender pay gap.[130][131] Peterson disputed the contention that the disparity was solely due to sexual discrimination.[131][132][133]

Peterson doubts the scientific consensus on climate change,[134][135] saying he is "very skeptical of the models that are used to predict climate change,"[136] and that "[y]ou can't trust the data because too much ideology is involved".[135][137]

Peterson married Tammy Roberts in 1989.[29] The couple have one daughter and one son.[25][29]

In a 2017 interview, Peterson was asked if he was a Christian; he responded, "I suppose the most straight-forward answer to that is yes".[138] When asked if he believes in God, Peterson responded: "I think the proper response to that is No, but I'm afraid He might exist".[10] Writing for The Spectator, Tim Lott said Peterson draws inspiration from Jung's philosophy of religion and holds views similar to the Christian existentialism of Sren Kierkegaard and Paul Tillich. Lott also said that Peterson has respect for Taoism, as it views nature as a struggle between order and chaos and posits that life would be meaningless without this duality.[32]

Starting around 2000, Peterson began collecting Soviet-era paintings.[30] The paintings are displayed in his house as a reminder of the relationship between totalitarian propaganda and art, and as examples of how idealistic visions can become totalitarian oppression and horror.[4][38] In 2016, Peterson became an honorary member of the extended family of Charles Joseph, a Kwakwaka'wakw artist, and was given the name Alestalagie ('Great Seeker').[30][139]

In late 2016, Peterson went on a strict diet consisting only of meat and some vegetables to control severe depression and an autoimmune disorder, including psoriasis and uveitis.[26][140] In mid-2018 he stopped eating vegetables, and continued eating only beef (see carnivore diet).[141] In 2019, Peterson entered a rehabilitation facility after experiencing symptoms of physical withdrawal when he stopped taking clonazepam, an anti-anxiety drug. He had begun taking the drug upon his doctor's recommendation following his wife's cancer diagnosis.[142][143][144] In early 2020, his daughter revealed that he had spent the previous year struggling with addiction to benzodiazepine tranquilizers and had gone to Russia for an experimental treatment that included a medically induced coma. He was neurologically damaged and unable to type or walk unaided.[145]

Continue reading here:

Jordan Peterson - Wikipedia