According to recent studies as well as long-held beliefs by gamers, playing video games can bring mental and physical benefits. The games industry is very big and, as fears of the economy slowing down and the potential of recession ahead it remains buoyant with record sales of software and ‘next generation’ consoles. 

 

Fundamentally the games industry is growing as it is because as a source of entertainment is it fun, absorbing, value for money and imparts a sense of achievement as well as, recently with online gaming, community and teamwork.  Now however you can add to this possible health and brain benefits, from problem solving, concentration, stress relief to visual and sight training.  The mass appeal of the DS and Wii is taking games, specifically “educational” or “training” titles, to a new demographic of people previously untouched by any of the big gaming companies.

 

Video games can help to improve both the movement and capabilities of your eyes.  Besides the release of a specific sight training game on the Nintendo DS playing certain types of games, especially action games, push a player’s eyes beyond what they would normally go through and the brain as a consequence adapts to it and improves.  Constant movements of the eyes and picking up on the small movements and subtle changes in pace and direction often seen in games effectively gives your eyes a work out.  Potentially this could mean that visual defects and injuries could be treated with specially designed games.  

 

 

Mentally there are also other benefits of a few hours gaming a week.  As a stress busting method games have been proven in studies to help students during revision periods by taking their mind away from studying and giving them a few minutes of needed relaxation, enabling them to concentrate better and work harder during the periods that they are working. In a similar way, games act as means of escapism, allowing everyone to leave the real world behind them for a few minutes a day, helping to relieve stress and boredom, thus improving an individual’s mental health.

 

So as the games market gets bigger and makes record amounts of money what are the benefits to you and I of spending our free time playing video games?  As mentioned above it is a fairly new phenomenon for the current generation of gaming consoles to release mass-appeal educational titles, such as the famous Brain Training games and Big Brain Academy Games.  The educational benefits of these games are clear to be seen by anyone who has played them, with faster brain activity and memory seeing marked improvements.  Add to this the physical benefits of the new Wii games such as Wii sports and the new Wii Fit and there is the potential for a full mind and body work out in your living room.

 

So gaming, far from being a source of ill health and injury can help to give your whole mind, body and eyes a work out.  To take advantage of games’ interactive abilities to impart both knowledge and health we have already seen specific titles like Wii Fit, Sign Training and Brain Training, so far all pioneered by Nintendo, and we will probably see more titles like this released in the future.

 

 

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WHY WE LOVE TO LIE, 3 by Dr. Harold Sala Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ, Ephesians 4:15 When I was a kid and Mother suspected that my story had been slightly amplified, she would say, “Son, look me in the eye!” She was convinced that if I could look her in the eye and tell her something, it was the truth! In Numbers 5 of your Old Testament, there is a passage which I’ve never fully understood; nonetheless, it was a provision to determine whether a wife was lying about being unfaithful to her husband. A wife who had been so accused went to the tabernacle, and took a vow before the Lord saying that she had slept with no one but her husband. Then she drank water which had some dust from the tabernacle floor in it. If she was telling the truth, there was no harm. If she was lying, she was cursed with childlessness. In ancient China, a suspected wrongdoer was forced by authorities to chew rice powder while being interrogated. If the powder was dry when the accused spit it out afterward, he was found guilty on the grounds that the stress of lying caused a dry mouth. Looking someone in the eye, taking a vow before the Lord, or chewing rice powder all indicate that when you are dishonest, there are physical consequences or manifestations. Studies indicate that no matter how cool a person may be when he lies, his body reveals the tension he’s experiencing in many ways. That’s the premise behind polygraph …

This was done by my good friend Mike Zumwalt. But because he’s a weiner he never put this up, despite how good it is. Major props. The song is by Jim’s Big Ego

We have all heard about the horror stories associated with home improvement projects – untrustworthy builders, projects running way over budget, poor workmanship and disputes with neighbours. Before you start, just let your head rule your heart for a moment and follow my top tips for making sure your own projects avoid those pitfalls. Some sound upfront planning is the key to a happy and stress-free home improvement project.
1 – Get your neighbours buy-in – Putting up a huge home extension without their knowledge is bound to upset your local residents, so get them involved early, let them have their say and make a few compromises where reasonable. However make sure you still get what you want without disputes cropping up.
2 – Aim for a usable but inspiring design – Don’t go for a cheap and boring scheme, but equally, make sure you don’t chose an extravagant design that just hikes up the cost for no real benefit.
3 – Check that the value-add to your property is economical – Make sure the scale of your project fits the type of home you have. There’s no point in spending £20,000 on a building scheme that will only add £5,000 to the value of your home.
4 – Choosing a Builder – Getting references for similar types of building work is crucial, but it’s also a good idea to go with your gut feel about a builder. It’s important that you get on with them – afterall you’ll be seeing a lot of them over the coming weeks. Also check that the builder has appropriate insurance – things can and do go wrong.
5 – Can you live with the project while it takes place? – Tidyness – will the builder maintain a clean site and regularly hire a skip to dispose of any rubbish? Working hours – builders like to start early (and finish early!) Can you cope with a 7am alarm call everyday? Safety – if you have young children, is the builder going to be sensible about protecting them from any hazards? Disruption plan – make sure you know about, and plan for, any downtime on kitchens, bathrooms, heating systems etc. Duration – get a completion date agreed upfront and a rough work schedule so that you can spot and sort out any overruns as early as possible.
6 – Document your build specification as accurately as possible. This is a must if you are to avoid disagreements and cost worries later. At some point a decision has to be made on every facet of the build. Either you make them upfront and everyone knows what’s going on or someone (the builder or you) will need to make the decisions later – this can easily lead to misunderstandings and extra costs.
7 – Agree, cost and document all changes as they happen – there will be plenty of amendments to the build project despite all your best plans, but make sure they are agreed in terms of scope and cost as they happen, to avoid any nasty disputes and costs at the end of the project.
8 – Payment plan – Agree in advance when you will pay your builder and the amount. If paying in stages, agree the breakdown and timings.
You can then save interest payments by planning to receive your home improvement loan (if you have one) at the most appropriate time and not earlier.
9 – Withhold some cash for snagging and approval – Agree with the builder to retain a fixed amount or percentage of the total fee until you have reached final completion and got local authority approval for the work. If they don’t like this, be worried and maybe find someone else, because this is normal practice.
10 – Plan for full completion – Don’t leave the project partly finished, otherwise your enjoyment of the whole thing will be compromised. If costs are tight, then scale something back so that you have enough money to finished off the planned job.
11 – Don’t underestimate self completion costs or time – a builder will work more quickly and efficiently than you can, especially if you only have weekends or evenings to spare – don’t leave yourself a huge finishing off job to do that will seem to take forever and spoil the project.
12 – Buy cost effectively – Your builder may want you to buy most of the raw materials through him and profit from, or share, in any trade discounts he has in place. It’s best to agree how this should work beforehand.
So plan, plan and plan again. Chose the best builder you can afford and good luck! It everything goes well you’ll have a more valuable asset and an improved home to enjoy for years to come.

Life today is filled with various kinds of stresses and strains. All of us are trying to cope up with one or the other kind of stress. While most of us manage to keep our chin up and swim through our personal sea of troubles, there are those among us who simply succumb to it and fall prey to the petty issues of life.

The presence of stress and tension robs us of our natural vitality and enthusiasm for life, rendering us dull and grumpy, far reducing our levels of efficiency in all aspects of our life. If we want to start leading a truly happy life, we first need to free our mind of all that accumulated tension. For the body to remain healthy, we first need to control our mind. A healthy mind alone gives rise to a healthy body. We will never be able to achieve our goal until and unless we learn to relax and let go of our own bondage of negativity.

What exactly is relaxation?

Relaxation is not about stopping all activity and shirking work. Quite on the contrary, it is about getting rid of all the negative energies within you, thereby optimizing your energies to get the most possible success and happiness out of your life. Relaxation is all about understanding and accepting the various challenges thrown at you, with a balanced outlook, without getting upset at the slightest provocation.

You can get your life back on track by employing various methods of relaxation, some of which are discussed in detail below:

• Meditation

Meditation, which is about mental control and exercising the mind to remain still, is indeed one of the best ways to manage stress. While meditation does not help in changing life circumstances, what is does is to teach you enough mind control to tackle difficult and unexpected events in your life. This ancient relaxation technique, practically a way of life with the people of the Indian sub-continent and the whole of the Orient, is a method of focusing oneself on the ‘Higher Self’, thus remaining unruffled by mundane, day-to-day events of life.

Meditation is best performed in complete silence, controlling breathing patterns in a certain prescribed method.

• Relaxation by way of visualization

You can effectively use projected mental images to ease your way out of mental and physical stress. Practicing visualization techniques for relaxation helps bestow tremendous peace on the mind. For instance, if you feel stressed out at work and are dying for a break, you could close your eyes and picture yourself watching a glorious waterfront sunset at some exotic destination. It will immediately relax your mind and put it to rest at least for the time being!

• Progressive relaxation

With this technique, you can achieve total relaxation by consciously tensing and releasing your muscles one by one, giving your body a sense of complete ease and comfort. This technique is especially useful to tackle several types of common aches and pains.

• Biofeedback

Biofeedback is a recent and much-debated technique to achieve relaxation, which requires you to observe and formally record your mind-body responses with the help of certain medical equipment. While there are many who swear by this method, there are an equal number of other experts who do not at all recommend this technique of mind control.

The above are only a handful of techniques you can employ for relaxation. Here is a word of caution. Do visit your healthcare professional before you choose any one method. There are some mental control techniques that require you to get a clean health chit from your doctor, especially if you are suffering from some medical disorder. Some techniques might actually end up changing your physiology in some way if taken to the extreme. So always be moderate in your approach and go slow and steady with your progress.

Stress – Stress and Pets

As with raising children, dealing with pets can be stressful. But often the situation is exactly the reverse: having pets frequently provides one of the best stress relief mechanisms around.

Several studies suggest that having a pet helps recovering surgery patients heal faster. If the link between infection and stress that some of them show is correct, this shouldn’t be surprising. The positive effect on the immune system could account for that.

For many, having pets clearly has an abundance of psychological pluses as well. Cats, for example, are obviously oblivious to any problems a person might have. They want their supper and their rub while perched in a warm, stationary lap. The shift of focus to the pets wants and away from the unpleasant episode at the office can help lower stress.

The sympathetic nervous system works in conjunction with other brain areas to generate hormones and signals that create our ‘fight or flight’ mechanism. Shifting attention away activates the parasympathetic nervous system that has opposite effects. In short, we calm down. That interlude helps the body achieve homeostasis – the move back to equilibrium from an extreme – that stress has interrupted.

Dogs are terrific stress relievers, when they aren’t creating more. Digging holes in the backyard, ruining a good pair of shoes or creating a mess on the carpet certainly don’t help alleviate stress. But a short game of fetch with a tennis ball can. Watching their eager joy in simple activities is a vivid reminder that not everything in life is an occasion for doom and gloom.

Dogs have been domesticated to live with humans for over 10,000 years. During that time they have participated in a hundred common human rituals and activities, some of which can offer relief from stress symptoms. Fishing, hiking and other activities are in themselves stress relievers. When accompanied by a loved and loving dog the effect is amplified.

Even aquarium fish can provide a source of stress relief. Taking care of tropical fish requires a lot of careful planning and execution. That focus helps keep one’s mind off what often amounts to trivial problems. Additional rewards can show up by observing the many interesting behaviors sea creatures exhibit.

A variety of pets – tropical birds, hamsters, ferrets and many more – frequently display actions that people find humorous. And even the most serious psychotherapist will agree that laughter is excellent medicine when it comes to lessening stress.

Though the form of communication between animals and humans is very different from that between one person and another, there is an undeniable understanding that forms between individuals and their non-human companions. That bond is often stronger than between casual friends. The result is a feeling of support without expectation of anything other than a good fur stroking.

After all, when was the last time you ever heard anyone say ‘my dog drove me to drink’?

Part 8 of a lively, informative 1-hour ‘Lunch & Learn’ talk by mind/body educator, April Rubino, exploring practical stress management techniques.

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