We have been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly just how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists. If this humility could be imparted to everybody, the world of human endeavours would become more appealing. Albert Einstein
When John and I were coming home from our mind and body retreat in Costa Rica, we were reading a book that I bought a couple of years ago, Why Woo Woo Works by Dr. David Hamilton.
Hamilton was an organic chemist working on drugs for cancer and cardiovascular conditions. Most people in the business of making drugs think of the placebo - typically a sugar pill to which people positively respond because they think it is actually a helpful drug, as a nasty problem. It's become more and more difficult to devise a drug that significantly out performs the placebo. Hamilton began to think of the placebo response as fascinating. He wondered how placebo works and how to harness it powers.
The book, Why Woo Works, is about how many things, for example placebo and alternative practices, are only nonsense to those who don't know the research. Science spans a very broad region of knowledge, and it's next to impossible to know everything about every scientific field. So some dismiss things they don't understand. He explains using this conversation he had with a friend.
Hamilton was walking in a park and pointed out a cloud to his friend. Hamilton told his friend that the cloud probably weighed around 100 tons. The friend laughed at the preposterous notion that the weight of a cloud could be known.
But Hamilton knew something his friend did not know. A cloud is made of water droplets. To figure out the cloud's weight, a drone can be flown through it with a cup that collects water droplets. The length of the cloud is measured by calculating the time it takes for the drone to fly through it at a given speed, and from there it's relatively easy to calculate from the amount of water droplets in the cup the approximate size of the cloud, roughly how much the cloud weighs.
The whole story is just to show that we often question the validity of ideas or practices simply because we know very little about them. Hamilton claims that there are some woo woo ideas and practices that are what he calls "true woo." They do have solid science behind them and the science is fascinating.
Where am I going with this? Well let's take stress. Stress is killing us. It's estimated that around ninety percent of doctor visits are related to stress in some way. But would a doc think to prescribe kindness for stress? AND what doctor would prescribe kindness as an anti-aging practice?
On Hamilton's website he discusses this further.
Everybody knows what stress feels like. We also know what it feels like when we’re kind, when someone is kind to us, or even when we witness kindness.
The feelings are opposite. Most of the effects inside the body are the opposite too.
Feelings of stress generate stress hormones in the brain and body, like cortisol and adrenalin.
Feelings of kindness generate oxytocin and nitric oxide. Stress creates tension in the nervous system, pushing it into ‘fight or flight’; Kindness relaxes the nervous system, guiding it into ‘rest and relax’.
Stress increases blood pressure, kindness reduces it.
Feelings of stress generate free radicals and inflammation in the arteries and immune system, which can eventually lead to cardiovascular disease. Feelings of kindness reduce free radicals in the arteries and immune system. Kindness is, in fact, ‘cardioprotective’ (protects the cardiovascular system).
Stress weakens the immune system, kindness boosts it.
Stress makes us unhappy; kindness makes us happy.
Stress is linked with depression; kindness is protective towards depression.
And just to top it off, while stress speeds up ageing, kindness slows ageing.
More on the Science (according to Hamilton)
I'm pretty much quoting Hamilton here. Stress is linked with cardiovascular disease. Small amounts of stress are OK and even relatively large amounts too, if not too frequent, but consistent stress is associated with poor health outcomes through having a negative impact on the heart, arteries, and immune system. Stress is ultimately associated with shortened lifespan.
On the other hand, the warm feelings we get through kindness generate oxytocin and nitric oxide. Nitric oxide softens the walls of our arteries and improves blood flow around the body. Together, oxytocin and nitric oxide reduce blood pressure.
Where stress increases free radicals oxidative stress and inflammation in the arteries and immune system, which is linked with hardening of the arteries, research on oxytocin using cells from the arteries and immune system found that it reduced free radicals and inflammation in the arteries and immune system, effectively acting as an efficient antioxidant and anti-inflammatory.
Research also shows that in relationships where there is more kindness, love and affection, there is also much less hardening of the arteries. It’s almost as if when we harden towards others, so we harden in the inside, but when we soften towards others, so we soften on the inside too.
Stress increases activity of the sympathetic nervous system, placing the body on alert. Kindness and compassion, on the other hand, increase parasympathetic activity , allowing the body to relax and regenerate. Kindness and compassion increase vagal tone which is a measure of parasympathetic activity.
Kindness makes us happier and is an antidote to depression. People who do regular volunteer work are generally happier and suffer less depression than people who don’t.
And here's what surprises people, but it really shouldn't. Kindness slows ageing. We’re all familiar with the tales of people whose hair went white rapidly once they began a stressful job. Stress causes oxidative stress and inflammation, which accelerate ageing of the heart and arteries, immune system, joints, muscles, hair, skin, brain … pretty much the whole body.
Kindness slows ageing in a few ways. Indirectly, simply through sparing ourselves stress we spare ourselves some of these effects. But more directly, the products of kindness (oxytocin, nitric oxide, and increased vagal tone), actively slow internal processes of ageing, like oxidative stress in the skin, muscles, arteries, immune system. Some research, for example, has shown a substantial reduction in oxidative stress in muscles and and skin when there’s plenty of oxytocin around.
Hamilton finishes up with this. You can’t get oxytocin from diet. You can’t eat it nor drink it. The only way to get it is to make it internally, and we make it through how we think, feel and behave. When our thinking, our feelings, and our behavior towards others and towards animals is kind then it’s like we turn on an oxytocin tap inside our bodies, giving us much of these ‘side effects’.
You don’t need to do something huge for it to qualify as a kind act. Simple gestures count too. Even a kind thought about someone that results in a smile on your own face is you being kind.
You don’t even need to give it much thought at all.
Now back to the retreat. One thing we did which you might find crazy is to write a love letter to our younger self. We were instructed to choose a specific age. We were to talk loving to this little one as we looked back.
When we shared our letters all of us cried. I think we each saw the wounds, the fears, the beauty and strength of this little character that was within each of us. And we were being kind to that little one, sending love.
I'm guessing our bodies were being flooded with oxytocin.
We did something similar when we practiced breathwork at the retreat. After we had done a lot of specific types of breathing, we imagined our younger self coming to us (there's a fine line between imagination and reality), interacting with us. We extended love toward each other. It was an act of kindness to come to affectionate terms with ourselves.
I sometimes use a loving kindness meditation as practice to soothe myself as I drift off to sleep. "May I be happy, my I be healthy, may I know that I am loved. May I use my suffering for greater strength, wisdom, and kindness." I send that same loving kindness meditation to everyone in my immediate family.
Ok, let's sum it up. Some things we think of as woo woo may actually be true woo. We may just not know the science. The body and mind are clearly connected. Kindness and its cousins like compassion, generosity, love can not only protect us from illness both physically and mentally, but even heal us. AND be an anti-aging practice.
Do I have a lot to work on to embrace humility? Do I have a lot to do in working with myself to be a kind person? On both counts, yes, I do. The one that bums me out the most is that I still get triggered by stupid stuff. I can point out several instances of my behavior, thoughts, and emotions going down the tube just this weekend. I can get really mad at myself. AND I'm working on using some self-kindness, self-compassion, to dust myself off and get back up to bat.
How might we journey together to the Good Life by embracing a little humility, own up to not knowing everything, and especially open our minds to considering the wisdom of the ages, true woo... like kindness being REALLY good for us humans?
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