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Beauty & Comfort
Every day, we're bombarded with threatening, jarring stimuli and messages — Boing! John Doe has sent you an instant message! Beep! You have a new cell phone message! Tonight's headlines: "Beware terrorists!" "Killer spinach!" Each time we take in a worrisome sight, sound, or piece of information, we activate the sympathetic nervous system, triggering the so-called fight-or-flight response. The heart beats faster, muscles tense, blood pressure and blood sugar levels rise, the digestive system and immune system are suppressed, and the body is flooded with the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol. These reactions are the exact opposite of those connected with the parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes relaxation — and calm.
"Radio, TV, and newspapers spew out potentially threatening messages, and our deep, primitive biological systems don't know how to differentiate between psychological stress and real, physical danger," notes David Simon, M.D., medical director of the Chopra Center in San Diego. "Whether we're conscious of it or not, we're constantly perceiving the world as a scary place."
One step toward cultivating calm is to dial down the amount of information you consume — a strategy I found indispensable while I was pregnant and especially vulnerable to being thrown off center. "The next step is replacing threatening stimuli with relaxing stimuli," says health psychologist Brian Luke Seaward, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Northern Colorado School of Public Health.
To test whether pleasant sensations actually promote calm, Nancy Etcoff, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist at Harvard Medical School, sent 27 people fresh-cut flowers to place in their homes, asking them to keep a detailed mood journal before and after the bouquets arrived. After a few days living with the blooms, subjects reported a decrease in negative emotions like anxiety and depression and an increase in positive feelings like compassion for others and energy and enthusiasm at work.
"Things that are beautiful to the senses capture our attention and quiet the mind in an effortless way," says Etcoff. "Changing your environment by bringing in your favorite music or photos of happy events and places and people you love is very calming and reassuring." The world is full of small harbingers of joy and harmony — you just need to seek them out and incorporate them into your daily routine. It can be as simple as taking a walk around a leafy park in the middle of a hectic day or burning a candle of your favorite scent at night.
Another way to foster the relaxation response is to engage in pleasant repetitive activities, says Alice Domar, Ph.D., executive director of the Domar Center for Complementary Healthcare in Waltham, MA. Those that involve easy concentration and lulling repetition, like knitting, swimming, even petting an animal, calm the mind. "During the course of a day, most of the thoughts women think are negative: They worry about the future or feel like failures for not having a spotless kitchen or fitting into size 6 jeans," says Domar. "Finding something you enjoy doing that distracts you from automatic, negative thinking patterns is important. It might be something you enjoyed as a child, when you were able to live in the moment and more easily experience joy."
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