"All you need is love……."
Watch this you tube video featuring musicians from
156 countries singing this song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh7D2g5v-Sg. Yes, love makes the world go round, so why not make this your goal for 2010 and beyond?
Before you think this is just sentimental mismash
and turn the page, please read a little more because there is hard science behind my words. There are really only two general
categories of emotional states: love, by which I mean the constellation of positive
emotions, and fear wherein I include stress, anger, depression, anxiety and so forth.
Please refer to recent articles on the book "Positivity" by Dr. Barbara Fredrickson describing these emotional states
and concluding that you need three experiences of positivity for every negative emotion. When our love banks are fully funded,
our lives are enriched as well as those of our families, our neighbors, our world and our universe. When our love banks are
depleted as seems to be the case now, discord and discontent abound.
Let's focus for a moment on just one part of the
love response, the hormone oxytocin. This hormone is released by the pituitary
gland in love activities, especially skin-to-skin contact between human beings. Oxytocin release creates important health
benefits such as decreasing your level of stress hormones. Oxytocin release is
stimulated by the heart and in a reciprocal fashion actually reduces cell death in an injured heart. Oxytocin also increases
social connections to others including bonding, trust, generosity and empathy.
Do you want to increase your "love potion"? Don't look for an oxytocin love pill. Synthetic
oxytocin can be manufactured but does not have the same effects as natural oxytocin and in fact can have health damaging effects. Do look for natural ways to increase your positive responsiveness to both primary
love relationships as well as secondary relationships of empathy and altruism. Research
shows that you cannot produce love through your mind by itself. You can say loving words or write poetry, but your mind will
invariably get in your way. Research by the Institute of HeartMath
has shown that individuals can learn to maintain emotional coherence for extended periods by self-generating and sustaining
a "heart-focused" emotional state, while mind-based cognitively-directed attempts can be sustained for brief periods only.
You can learn to breathe into your heart, focus on positive feelings of love and learn to generate this state of emotional
coherence.
What about love for the world, the earth and the
universe? Religion and spirituality have claimed that consciousness is universal and shared and that all forms of love are
related. Now there is scientific proof! The Global Coherence Project (http://noosphere.princeton.edu/) placed receivers placed around the world to investigate
the relationship between human consciousness and the energetic fields of the earth and solar system. Many interrelationships have been documented, including a significant change in the receivers which occurred
during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Most interesting, the receivers were significantly affected three hours
before the first plane attack! Experiments by meditation groups found that crime
rates and war activities are significantly reduced during periods of intense group focus.
While your individual acts of altruism or prayers/medications have been shown to have significant effects beyond yourself,
shared or group efforts have even more potency. With the current world distress,
many people are calling for group activities to change the direction of world events.
The website www.glcoherence.org provides access to group meditation activities, including
the "two minute planetary radiance."
We began and will end this article in song. Do you
remember this one?
"I'd like to teach the world to sing, in perfect
harmony... I'd like to see the world
for once all standing hand in hand, and hear
them echo through the hills
for peace throughout the land."
