Mind Orchards
The gardeners at Mindapples have been thinking about ‘mental spaces’. We want to turn Mindapples into a physical community by tagging places in cities and offices as ‘Mindapples zones’. Basically, places that make you feel more mentally healthy, like a park, a great view, or a really relaxing cupboard. We want to find really beautiful, […]
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Get well in the garden
We’ve always known that fresh air does you good, but now it seems that getting up close and personal with gardening can improve your overall well being. Studies from the University of Bristol indicate that simply touching “friendly bacteria” in soil may alter behaviour in a way similar to that of taking antidepressants. Meanwhile, research […]
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Relationships are the only things that matter
For the first time, a journalist, Joshua Wolshenk, has been given access to the archives of one of the most comprehensive longitutudinal studies in history. For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. […]
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Psychology and the Economy
I’m currently sat in the RSA lunchtime lecture with Robert Shiller about how human psychology drives the economy. John Maynard Keynes famously used the term ‘animal spirits’ to refer to the animating forces that drive people to action. He argued that economists were wrong to model human behaviour as rational, an emphasized that no-one can […]
Continue reading Sing your way to happiness
Singing is not only fun, it offers an antitode to stress, illness and depression. “When you sing, you breathe in a different way so you use more of your total lung volume. This means there’s a tendency to increase the airflow so your blood is more oxygenated. When that happens, you are more alert. Singing […]
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