Four tips to practice good mental hygiene during the coronavirus outbreak

__ Just a few days ago my son’s col­lege, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, announced it would be can­celling all in-per­­son class­es and finals to help con­tain the spread of the coro­n­avirus. One con­firmed on-cam­­pus case prompt­ed the university’s response. Though the uni­ver­si­ty will incur high costs—they have to deep-clean the whole cam­pus, for example—I, for…

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Manage Stress for Your Brain Health

We just received this very insight­ful essay on stress man­age­ment and brain health writ­ten by Lan­don, a home­school­er and par­tic­i­pant in Susan Hill’s writ­ing work­shop. Susan asked her stu­dents to write about impli­ca­tions of recent brain research. Enjoy the arti­cle and the long week­end (at least here in the US) and Relax… ——————— Stress Man­age­ment for…

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Emotional Intelligence and Faces

Paul Ekman has con­duct­ed exten­sive research on iden­ti­fy­ing emo­tions through facial expres­sions. As part of that research, and as part of the pow­er of dis­ci­pline and train­ing, he learned how to con­scious­ly manip­u­late 42 facial mus­cles, includ­ing many that in most of us are beyond our con­trol, and even aware­ness. In the 60s and 70s…

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Can a brain fitness program help me become more creative?

Here is ques­tion 20 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Questions.Question:Can a brain fit­ness pro­gram help me become more creative?Key Points: Cre­ativ­i­ty can be trained, like oth­er men­tal muscles.Set up struc­tured time, places, or rou­tines that pro­vide a frame­work for cre­ativ­i­ty to happen.Reducing your stress helps to keep your brain more flexible.Using many parts of the brain as well as try­ing new things will stim­u­late the areas of your brain involved in creativity.

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