Connectedness to others, and to Nature…

 

Human beings as a rule don’t do well in isolation. For example, a cruel experiment carried out in the 1200’s took babies away from their mothers, who were then brought up without touch or other forms of human contact – they died a short while later. We all need love, attention, and fellow human beings.

There are some very interesting videos from Stanford Medicine on the subject of Compassion. While there are too many to add here, the opening page is well worth a look.

Here’s a wonderful talk by Brené Brown on TED about connectedness and vulnerability. It is really her story about how she let go of her fears to become who she really is. In case you wonder what a Pinto Box is, it’s a storage box!

 

We all need to be connected. It’s the most natural thing for human beings to form relationships with others. We are hard wired that way.

Part of being connected is that we need not just friends and acquaintances, but we also need intimate relationships too. Relationships that involve touch and contact with another. Without this web of relationships we can literally become ill, or even die as stated above. This has been known for a very long time.

For a dramatic example, as mentioned previously, in 1248 the German emperor Frederick II conducted a cruel experiment to find out what language children would speak if they were raised without hearing anyone talking. He took several newborn babies from their parents, and then gave them to nurses who were forbidden to touch or talk to them. The babies all died before they ever learned a language. The historian Salimbene at the time said of these babies: “They could not live without petting.”

More recently in 1915, a study of babies in ten institutions found that all babies less than two years old had died, even though they had adequate nutrition and sanitation. The reason was that at that time there was concern about spreading infectious diseases, which led to a policy of minimal human contact with the babies.

There are now hundreds of studies demonstrating the very human need for connectedness and intimate contact with others.

It is known that the psychological effects of even just massage have been found to be useful in treating asthma, autism, back pain, cancer, depression, developmental delays, dermatitis (psoriasis), diabetes, eating disorders (bulimia), heart disease, irregular heart beats, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and post traumatic stress disorder. A study over one month of HIV-positive men found that massage caused a significant increase in both the number and cytotoxicity of natural killer cell activity.

We mustn’t forget the role of the heart in human connectedness. This is no fuzzy warm concept here. The Institute For HeartMath carries out research into the heart-brain relationship. The findings show that we must take the heart, its neurons and its capacity for memory into account when we are considering how we influence one another. The emotions are obviously influenced by heart activity too:

 

Another great resource is an online magazine created by Berkeley called Greater Good. It has as its strapline: “The Science of a Meaningful Life.” Its mission is to show people how to implement positive research into people’s daily lives. You can find many interesting articles, videos, and other resources there.

Jason Silva – Return To Awe: