Being an Astronaut/Women Against Climate Change
Being an Astronaut/Women Against Climate Change
Being an Astronaut
Being an Astronaut/Women Against Climate Change
Being an Astronaut/Women Against Climate Change
Being an Astronaut/Women Against Climate Change
Water Life
when did you become a campaigner for the emphases?
Until I was eight years old I lived in san Franciscan. But them my parents divorced and my mother moved my elders did so small external town of mandoo.
What is WECAN?
Being an Astronaut/Women Against Climate Change
But this experience brought me to some deeper question an a young person. Why were human destroyed the Earth? Why is there industrial logging ancient forest at a time of ecological crisis? Why are human polluting our own waters? That’s when i declared my life to defending and protecting the Earth
Being an Astronaut/Women Against Climate Change
Do you shrink that violence against women and violence against the lands interconnected
Being an Astronaut/Women Against Climate Change
Being an Astronaut/Women Against Climate Change
Being an Astronaut/Women Against Climate Change
Woman comprise about $0 per cent of climate refugees and studies report that of 26 million people estimated to have been displaced by climate change 20 million are woman
Being an Astronaut/Women Against Climate Change
thus we make competition our way of life common the happened one of good into word
What Module change can the everyday person make sure?
What is must important message can’t like an impart to women at this crucial moment in the population of planet Earth?
Letters to Mars/Eliza Reid/Vigdis Finnbogadottir/Letters from Glasgow
Letters to Mars/Eliza Reid/Vigdis Finnbogadottir/Letters from Glasgow
Letters to Mars
Letter To Mars
Dianne McGrath
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Letters to Mars/Eliza Reid/Vigdis Finnbogadottir/Letters from Glasgow
Etsuko Shimabukuro
Eliza Reid: The First Lady of Iceland
Vigdis Finnbogadottir: The World’s First Female Head of State
Letters to Mars/Eliza Reid/Vigdis Finnbogadottir/Letters from Glasgow
Letters to Mars/Eliza Reid/Vigdis Finnbogadottir/Letters from Glasgow
WOMEN HAVE BEEN VERY STRONG IN MANY FILLERS BUT WERE INFOCATED IS AN OLD TRADITION OF MALE-DOMINATED SOCIETIES.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————Intervention PhotographerGILLIAN LECKIEFour years ago I was Comming She need is a very haivy person new my spotness.
Letters to Mars/Eliza Reid/Vigdis Finnbogadottir/Letters from Glasgow
Interview Stav Centropo
Fit GerrardLetters from Gl
ROSEMARY STEED
Letters to Mars/Eliza Reid/Vigdis Finnbogadottir/Letters from Glasgow
Letters to Mars/Eliza Reid/Vigdis Finnbogadottir/Letters from Glasgow
Greek Essence/The Neural Network (to be continued in next email)
Greek Essence/The Neural Network (to be continued in next email)
Greek Essence———————————————————————————————————–It is said that Crete was in a prosperous era. Afterwards, Mycenae cultivated a lot. Then, around the 5th century BC, ethics scholars and doctors paid attention to the freedom of olives and began using them in various ways. Greek mythology can also describe Greece’s love of olives. The story of Aisina being chosen as a guardian deity after gifting an olive tree to the citizens is famous. After Hercules completed his 12 strikes, he plantedIt was also a tall tree. That’s not all. Opened in 776 BC, the first Olympic champion was made from olive leaves and branches. These olives are an important commodity that cannot be left out in Greek history, but Greece is beginning to gain its name as an olive oil powerhouse.It was after the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s. Today, Greece has about 132 million trees and produces 200,000 olives and 30 olive oil per year. The place with the most variety of olive varieties is Greece. We are in love with two types. Just name the variety you are looking for and your child will be able to tell.” Guitaris, a grocery store on Adinis Street in central Athens, has an abundance of pulp. Most popular with tourists.Panayotis Promitis, a 67-year-old farmer from southern Greece.Olives are grown in Maam Abia, 9 kilometers away. He moves the group down the tree.harvested. It is the strongest life form on earth, saying, “Every grown olive has branches that are opposite to the smaller ones.” Promitis smiled and said, “You just have to water it how much you want it to grow. Then you can harvest olive trees. Olive trees can be found everywhere in Greece, from the hills to the plains. As the soil gradually accumulates and the climate is added, olives are truly a relief to singers.60% of Greece’s farmland is used for olive production. Olives were first discovered in 3500 B.C.Panagiotis Psoromitis is a 67-year-old olive farmer from Avia, a village 9km southeast of the city of Kalamata, on Greece’s Peloponnese. He has spread a net beneath a colossal olive tree and is giving instructions to a worker shaking off the oüves with a long stick. “Gently! Don’tbruise them! After the net is full, they empty the olives into sacks and carry the net to the next tree, repeating the process for all 500 trees in the grove. From November until March, Psoromitis trees yielded 50kg of kalamata table olives small, oval-shaped fruits that mature into a shiny shade of aubergine-and produced several tons of olive oil. “These are the mostresilient creatures on Earth, Psoromitis says. “Water them every 10 days if it hasn’t rained, and they sustain you for life.” Indeed, Greece favors olives more than any other crop. Propitious winds that stir up the soil, a sea that adds moisture to the air and a mild climate all combine to create ideal conditions. Sixty percent of all land used foragriculture in Greece is devoted to olive trees.MORNINOCALMGreece is home to 132 million olive trees. Sixty percent of Land used for agriculture in the country is devoted to olives loppositel A worker separate harvested fruitsale in a local markat above right. It was in Minoan Crete in 3500BC that the first olive treewas ever cultivated. Later, cultivation passed to mainland Greece and the Mycenaean civilization (c1600-1100BC). Between the seventh and third centuries BC, scholars anddoctors began looking into olives curative properties, a knowledge reflected in today’s widespread enthusiasm for the Mediterranean diet. For ancient Greeks, the olive tree perennial, hardy and able to grow back if cut down-was a symbol of fertility and rebirth. Their reverence for it is reflected in their fables. The goddess Athena gifted the Athenians an olive tree, thereby winning the right to be the city’s patron Alter Hercules completed his 12Labors, he planted an olive tree in Olympia. And when the first GREECE Olympic Games took place in 776BC, winners were presented with olive wreaths.————————————————————————————————————–There are so many different types of olives in Greece that it is difficult to list them, the most famous of which are the ‘Baldeer olives’, the main producer of the spicy-tasting Zakistes’ olives, and the famous ‘Trubes’ olives, which have many wrinkles and a delicious taste, in rich sources. do. On the other hand, the dots on the shape are green and boast excellent quality.Stella Ostcellus, the chef at Elijah, a restaurant in the Argaubli region south of Athens, which means ‘olive’ in Greek, knows better than anyone else how important olives are. He cooks the cuttlefish in the traditional Greek way by adding olive oil, white wine, olive oil, salt and pepper. Oannis Solakis, the head chef who won the most prestigious culinary award in Greece, also uses olives as a theme. We present a high-quality menu called the land of my wife Olive. Chopped yam Olives in olive all labiovel. At Nis restaurant 1 Poli, chef leanvis Solakisprepares a martini accompanied by Greek olives thetow let and Olive’s Earth, a dish whose sinced kalamata olives m Fresh oregano on olives is shaped like an olive tree. It is named so because it resembles the soil it grows on. “The characteristics of Greek cuisine are unique yet healthy dishes.” Olives are the key to Greek cuisine. “The taste of the food cooked together is very rich in antioxidants and vitamins, especially vitamin E.”Olivena is excellent in terms of health. According to many studies, olive leaf extract is known to lower blood pressure and is excellent for diabetes and internal diseases. In addition, the glass tree is used to make various items such as kitchen furniture and decorations.Chef Stelios Koutrouvelis knows the diversity and gastronomic value of olives well. At the suburban Athens restaurant Elia, whose name is the Greek word for olive, he cooks cuttlefish with wild horta (boiled greensl, green olives, onions, white wine, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. Across town at IPoli, chef loannis Solakis-holder of four Toques d’Or, Greece’s most prestigious culinary award-has created a dish called Olive’s Earth that contains a base of minced kalamata olives mixed with oregano and thyme to resemble the soil in which olive trees grow. “The olive is Greek cuisine’s cornerstone,” he says Ask the average Greek, and you’ll find that, to them, the olive is a medicine, a dietary staple, a work of art and asymbol of cultural identity. What it means to the country’s people was perhaps best captured by the poet and Nobel laureate Odysseas Elytis when he said, “If you deconstruct Greece, you will in the end see an olive tree, a grapevine and a boat remain. That is, with as much, you reconstruct To Greece, olives are Greek culture itself. Dias Ellis, a poet and winner of the Noh Literature Prize, expressed the meaning of olives to Greeks as follows: “If there were three things that could make Greece, it would be olive trees, grape vines, and pears. If we had these three things, we could recreate Greece.”her By Star Dimitropoulos Photographs by has Georgouleas CORNERSTONE AND BUILDING BLOCK Despite the tree’s historical importance, it wasn’t until after the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s that Greece rose to prominence as a global olive oil power. Today, the country produces some 200,000 tons of table olives and 300,000 tons of oliveoil annually. It also has the greatest variety of olives. “I sell 42 kinds of olives. You name it, I have it,” boasts Paulos Giotakis, the owner of Giotakis, a grocery store on Athinas Street, in the heart of Athens. “The most popular are kalamatas, which have a rich, fruity flavor “Tourists go crazy over them. But there are other varieties too. Among the most famous is the peppery, pale green Halkidiki olive, which is grown on Greece’s eponymous northern peninsula. Attica produces Tsakistes, a light green, wrinkled olive. The prolific Peloponnese also yields Koutsouroelia, a round olive with a golden-yellow color and fruity notes. The huge, black, wrinkly and bitter Throubes thrives on the northern Aegean island of Thasos.Tsounati olives-lemon-shaped, dark green fruits of exceptional quality-are grown on Crete. The list goes on.———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————The Neural Network———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-neuroscience
“Loss is more important
The previous century witnessed the explosion of the science of psychology and the early tendrils of groundbreaking fields like behavioural economics andneuroscience. The age-old world of business was swept alongIt was Adam Smith who first coined thetheory of the “invisible hand” – the idea that when we make a self-interested decision, say to buy a fancy dress and a designer handbag. it gives a helping hand to the wider economy. From the “invisible hand” evolved the concept of the “invisible mind” – the (still) uncharted territory of emotion and reason, of feelings and logic, of hidden desires andburied intentions to explain why we might buy that particular dress or handbag.36 Today, science can dive deep into the workings of the human mind. It can putthe brain under scans to see which parts of it light up when we see an advertisement. It can design tests that will predict which employee is least susceptible to corruption. It can even take advantage of the mind’s desire for simplicity, to help businesses and organisations design campaigns thatwill most readily be adopted by people. And for the scientists and experts who areleading these advances, we are only just seeing the beginning BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS: No, we are not perfectly rational customers and successfulbusinesses know that. To understand the way customers think, first take a brief sidestep into the world of award-winning economic theory. Last year, Richard Thaler won the Nobel prize for economics for “providing a more realisticanalysis of how people think and behave when making economic decisions”, Aman in lifelong pursuit of behavioural economics, Thaler proved that people arepredictably irrational in ways that transcend economic theory. He was not the first to speak about human irrationality. Fifteen years earlier, two psychologists named Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky also won a Nobel prize, pointing out howprone humans are to bad judgment and rigid thinking. Should we want to improveour reality, we had better start improving our own way of grasping it, Kahneman and Tversky’s prospect theory said, in a nutshell.. This theory not only went on to shape behavioural economics, but also to providehomeworenin——————————————————————————————————————Brain neurons rendered in CGIthan winning
Associate Professor of Neuroscience at Washington University
fascinating insights into what influences people’s decisions as purchasers. “Many of these doctrines can help businesses of today understand what clients want,” says Camillo Padoa-Schioppa, Associate Professor of Neuroscience at Washington University in St Louis. “For example, one of prospect theory’s central biases is loss aversion, which says that loss is more important than winning.” Imagine your business is Netflix. You give your clients a free trial period of three months, after which it is up to them to decide whether they should switch to paid. subscription or not. This means that after three months of enjoying Netflix, they are now faced with the pain of losing it. Add temporal discounting to the mix, and watch sales spike. This is the phenomenon that if you anticipate the value of a reward at a much later stage than initially promised, the wow factor dies down. Padoa-Schioppa explains, “Let’s say you want to buy an electric car from Tovota. What do you do first? You seek information. so Toyota must make sure you know it sells electric cars through advertising. But then comes the knowledge of temporaldiscounting. We tend to defer payments, which means that if Toyota wants to make the sell, it must be aware that the human mind finds it much more preferable to pay little by little, in instalments.” What role does emotion play incustomer engagement? Brand-attachment. theory says that consumers are likely to prefer emotionally or culturally significant products. Marketers must therefore know how to evoke soulful emotions like joy, workspace TOUD.COPsychologist Daniel Kahneman receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his groundbreaking research on behavioural economics
Camillo Padoa-Schloppa,
Associate Professor of Neuroscience
at Washington University
A 3D render of the brain
“Humans can be fickle – customer loyalty is not guaranteed for life”sorrow and fear in order to secure an emotionally charged bond between thecustomer and their brand. David Hall is Executive Director at Behaviour Change. Based in Workspace’s Archer Street Studios in Soho, the not-for-profit social enterprise addresses major social and environmental challenges by developing ideas that help people embark upon positive action. “Emotions are powerful and more likely to have an impact on decisions than rational calculation. A good example would be World Wildlife Fund, whose association with iconic animal species and a cute panda logo is a far more effective money-raising tool thanrational arguments about climate change or species depletion,” Hall says.David Hall, Executive Director at Behaviour Change 38 Yet humans can be fickle. Even if businesses establish a long-term emotional relationship or attachment to a brand, customer loyalty is not guaranteed for life. Successful brands are those that tap into another “source of gold”, says Hall, namely mental shortcuts. Our brains use these quick and intuitive algorithms to give a rough answer to a reasoning question in a fairly. easy way (if you want examples of suchshortcuts, look no further than educated. guesses or guesstimates). Hall advises that brands should focus on those priceless moments of decision that lead to impulse purchases, rather than solely building long-term loyalty. The reason Shortcuts ease the load on your brain when it has to decipher cognitive problems, and what better than offering less homework to a brain that’s constantly bombarded by non-stop waves of information? “An effective brand might be one that makes it easy for you to do the thing you want to do, such as Uber; cuts through complexity like Apple; or is simply the thing you’ve done so many times before it becomes a habit, like the toothpaste you buy,” Hall says. “They all help people shortcut a decision by cutting out the need for effortful thought.”THE POWER OF PSYCHOMETRIC TESTS: Hire better staff that stick around and support the team. It is estimated that the wrong hiring decision can set organisations back by 30%-176% of the annual salary of each vacant position. Perhaps that explains why the popularity tomeworkmagalineDavid HallExecutive Director at Behaviour—————————————————-IneuroscienceRight: Brain cells colourised via computer to be visible microscopically Below: Talking neuroscience at the WBI dinner (1-r) Joseph Devlin, James Turner, James Naylor, Andy Gallof psychometrics – tools that measure psychological abilities and aptitudes – has exploded in the last two decades in all stagesof the recruitment process. “All humans are susceptible to erroneous judgments,” says Sabina Socias,UK Branch Manager at Central Test, a Workspace customer in Kennington Park.This international publisher provides psychometric assessments and training tomeet challenges in the human-resources sector. Such challenges include trying toavoid wasting money and resources training a recruit who doesn’t fit the role; helping those employees who prove indispensable for the business to juggle their personal and professional life; and helping business owners manage a pool of diverse employees. “Psychometrics bypass the biases and stereotypes we all have and allow for a fairer assessment,” Socias explains. They allow companies to make more responsible assessments, and thus to be more socially responsible.” However, they are also. highly adjustable. The latest trend is to bypass traditionalpersonality assessments in favour of situational-judgment tests, to see how wella candidate fits into the company culture. These types of psychological aptitudetests put people in work-related scenarios and assess their reactions. “This is a more valid assessment of people’s abilities and behaviour,” says Socias. Situational-judgment tests make it easier to see if an individual fits with the company culture because they place them in a particular context where they have to project themselves and say how they would react or behave, whereas traditional questionnaires. ask about past behaviour. Central Test uses emotional-intelligencequestionnaires, tests designed to measure how people understand, manage andinterpret their own emotions, and those of others. These types of tests are mushrooming in popularity. Simultaneously, there is a huge shift in mentality in the workplace. Previously, a sign of a good employee was a loyal worker who had remained in a company for a long stretch of time. In 2018,nomads rule. “We live in a culture where the new generation does not tend to stay in one position for long. You have to change jobs perhaps every two or five years to show that you have variety in your resume, but this makes companies suffer financially. It is very 40 homeworkmadaline————————————————————————————————-
Letters from Iceland/Can Smiling Make You a Better Runner
Letters from Iceland/Can Smiling Make You a Better Runner
LETTERS FROM ICELAND: Helga Dögg
I spent much of childhood in the offices of the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association because my mother was the chairwoman between 1980 and 1985. She always worked full time, jugeling three daughters, a husband, and a concer. She was the manager of a large rescue association and a busineswoman. Seeing her busy all the time was normal for me but my friends with “at–home mum‘ found it a bit strange
My father was always supportive. They shared roles within the home; for example, my father, who worked
as a dentist, would take care of the evening meals three days a week and was always home when she was at work. A lot has changed since then in leeland; now we have a good daycare system and so most women, work outside the home.
Iceland is probably one of the best places to grow up or rabe a child in the world, especially in my time. In winter we played with snow We built snow houses and snowinięt und went skiing and skating on the pond. Icelandic nature is beautiful, but harsh. You can drink fresh water from the mountain springs but you have to be careful not to fall off the mountainside. It’s often windy.
When I left home, 1 studied comparative literature and then a master’s degree in business, I met my husband on vacation in Spain
when I was age 22. We had grown up in the same neighbourhood, jast a couple of blocks away, but hadn’t met each other until that day in Spain. A year later, we moved to England. He was studying for his master’s degree so I enrolled in a one year exchange program at the University College London.
I loved London because in so many ways it’s similar to Iceland English people have a sense of humour similar to our own, but in other ways life is vastly different. There is a class system in England the working closinhabits a different universe to the middle class it secos. Before this I’d only seen such class divide in movies. Most of our friends were not local but international students. I remember a situation once a friend of oun from Canada started chit–chatting to a girl who worked in the campus kitchen. When be returned to our table, a preppy English guy who was linching with us was appalled that the guy was talking to “the help“. I never imagined anything like this happening in leeland, but it showed me how some of the upper class in: England rice to the lower class
We got married lite, after nine years of being together. I was age 31. By that time we’d already had a second child. But this is not unusual. in Iceland, Couples don’t necessarily
get married before having children. My eldest son is age 16, my daughter
13, and my youngest boy is 7. When I first became a mother I thought I understood what life was all about. I thought I knew it all – but I was wrong. Motherhood is a visceral experience. I learned to be more patient and to forgive and to acquire the humility to put my ego side. Having a second child was planned; we wanted our firstborn to have a sibling, but the third was a bit of a surprise.
I have been an executive board member of the leelandic Women’s Rights Association for probably four years now. My day job is in the male–dominated information technology sector. Older men just don’t understand what the fuss in all about, what we are fighting for “Don’t you have a home, don’t you have it all they ask. Older Icelandic men still think that boy should be boys and girls should be housewives. I would be if I claimed there is no patriarchy in Iceland.
When the financial crisis hit in 2008, I discovered that those roponsible for the banking cross were mostly men. Women govern in different ways to men. Women take less risks. Therefore, both men and women should be at the table finding solutions. The world needs both penpectives.
Interview: Stav Dimitropoulos
Helga Dogg
LETTERS FROM ICELAND: Guðrún Jónsdóttir
On October 24, 1975, we did not go to work. We did not do any housework. We did not cook. We did not look after children. I was 21 years old.
I was standing in a sea of wome en at the biggest demonstration in Iceland’s history. We went on to the streets to protest wage discrepancy and unfair employment practices We demonstrated how important women were for the economy and society. Honestly, we had no idea how this whole thing had set off,
And it felt normal. I thought, “Wow, I’m not alone, we all feel this way, I realised that we could find ways to channel this power. And I realised that I would nev- er return to feeling like I was the problem. I discovered that it was society that had to change
My husband took our one year–old daughter to work with him and his employer scolded him. My partner, of course, stood by my side, explaining to his boss that it was either our daughter and him at work that day or nobody.
The 1975 loelandic women’s strike put my life on another tra jectory. It was my wake–up call For many years I had this tension building inside me. I was inite at how few opportunities women had in Iceland and how they suffocated in the confines of the home.
I remember stening to one of the major speakers at the protest “one of my mother’s best friends. She didn’t have any formal education but was standing firm like a pillar. ready to fight, an ordinary working woman performing an imprompr speech. It then dawned on me that everything is possible in life..
Before 1975 the political agen da did not include women’s rights and women in the medu were ob jectified or invisible, all these things drove me up the wall. And, if I spoke our, I got a puzzled store, “Is this res ally necessary!
I was born in 1954 and raised by my mother, a working–class house wife with six children. I wanted to become a biologut but in 1990 1 went to Norway with my family to do further studies in biology and it was here the activist in me surfaced and 1 became a social worker instead. We stayed for six years. I became the executive director of the wom en’s movement in Norway. My col leagues were often surprised when I candidly talked to Parliamentarians about what needed to be done. But I’d learnt from the small leelandic microcosm that no one could intim- idate me. And this, I think, is not unique to me. All leelandic women are like this.
For six years I worked as a cour dinator for the Icelandic Women’s
Alliance, lobbying to change pol icies and legislation. I also raised awareness against prostitution and trafficking, and we’ve managed to implement the so–called “Swedish, model” where it is forbidden to “buy” prostitute in Iceland but the wom en are not criminalised and we’ve managed to close down strip clubs, which are nothing other than dens of prostitution in disguise. We de- fine prostitution as “violence against women“, and therefore men who buy prostitutes should be held responsi ble; it’s as simple as that. There is nothing more demeaning to a wom- an than selling her body. The myth of the “happy prostitute‘ is ridiculous,
Over many years of working with victims of trafficking, abused wom- en, and women in prostitution, not once have I encountered a “happy prostitute. For example, one wom an came to us as a prostitute, seek ing help. Her background was tragier she was raped by family members us a child. She became a drug addict and fell into prostitution. She told us horrendous tales of torture by her buyers that will stay with me forever. She managed to get out of drugs, and just when we thought we’d helped her get back on track, she took her own life. Her loss has been heavy.on my conscience ever since. I feel that because she lost her voice I have to be twice as loud as before.
Interview: Stav Dimitropoulos
LETTERS FROM ICELAND: Nanna Gunnarsdóttir
In Icelandic we have the saying “Visor við elt
er homma head“, which more or less translates to “Those who remain homebound are bound to remain ignorant. I think this outlook on travel is rich in kelandic culture We are isolated, sometimes only 50 people can populate a tiny fjord village, and we want to know what lies beyond.
I grew up in Reykjavik but I too wanted to learn what hes beyond. I have been to every continent of the world except Antarctica, At
18 I went to Barcelona and met musicians. In Buenos Aires, I leamt to dance the tango. In Hemsedal, I worked at a ski resort and spent my free time snowboarding. In Tallinn. I attended seminars at a drama school. In London, I studied and worked. In São Paulo I lived with a Brazilian. host family.
Lcome from a long line of large families. My mother had five sibling My dad had five too. I grew up in the centre of Reykjavik where there was a strong sense of community. It was a peaceful childhood – playing on the streets, returning home by a certain time because there were no cell phones back then. Traffic was minimal and crime was zero. As a typical leelandic kid, I developed a strong connection to the weather. I kamt how dependent we are
on its moods, because you know, weather in Iceland is kind of crazy. One morning it can be sunny and beautiful and by afternoon it’s frecting cold. In winter it’s nearly impossible to make place to drive somewhere, even a week in advance. suddenly a snowstorm strikes and all the rods are closed.
In England, I started learning physical theatre. Physical theatre is about being present and learning to inhabit your body more consciously It is much more spontaneous than just having a script and reciting words. I also love immersive theatre. and in Reykjavik I have established a poetry brothel. It resembles the Ent poetry brothel, which is located in New York. It’s a Moulin Rouge type of bohemian bordello whore artists come together, poets, actors, musicians and so forth, to crea world of escapism and to sell their poetry. Mind you, the poetry brothel has nothing to do with prostitution. I am against prostitution. When someone has paid access to your body they can do homble thing both to it and to your soul.
Since 2012, I have been in
a relationship with my English boyfriend, Owen. We set at a Eurovision party. But I don’t plan on getting married. I mean, I am. not religious, so marriage doesn’t have any religion meaning for me.
Nor am I sure it has any meaning at all. A wedding to me is just a great big party where you invite all your friends and family to come and have a great time. If I want to, I can always throw a big party without the getting married bit. I also don’t plan on having kid. My viewpoint is kind of unusual, because, you know,
in leeland most people have kids. And most people are married or have been married a couple of times. There are a lot of single parents or combined families, where both have children from former relationships But I simply don’t have the desire to have children. I lack the maternal instinct. Since was age 16, I’ve had people telling me I will change my mind when I meet the right one. Well, I’m age 32, have met the right one, and still don’t want kids. Our world is already overpopulated. Do I need to bring another child into this world? If I want to have a child in the future, I can sidestep pregnancy and adopt one that needs a home. To be honest pregnancy also creeps
me out in a way.
So, my next plan is to go to India for the first time on an adventure tour, the rickshaw nice. I will be travelling from the north part of India to the south in a rickshaw. I suppose life for me is a grand adventure, a big, fat journey, and the freer I am, the better
Interview: Stav Dimitropoulos
Nanna Gunnarsdóttir
Can Smiling Make You a Better Runner?
THE SCIENCE BEHIND HOW TRAINING YOUR FACIAL
MUSCLES CAN IMPACT YOUR RESULTS
BY STAV DIMITROPOULOS
LAST YEAR, TOP–RANKED marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge ran 26,2 miles in just two hours and 25 seconds in Monza, Italy, as part of Nike’s Breaking2 project. His time, although not record–eligible, is the fastest marathon time ever recorded, and the effort required to clock it was undoubtedly grueling. Yet Kipchoge never let it show on his face. In fact, it appeared as if he was actually grinning at times: No, he was not trying to mock his competitors. Kipchoge was smiling–he later told reporters–in order to relax and work through the pain, employing a strategy some runners have long believed to be true: that smiling while running can help you run more efficiently.
Considering the time and effort we ded- icate to training and focusing on form, it’s hard to believe that something as simple as a smirk could have that much of an effect on our performance, but science backs it up. Studies have shown that when we enrich our workout with a smile, we feel that the effort we put out–our perceived effort–is far less than the effort we exert when we frown while exercising. But no research had seriously looked into the effects of manip- ulating our facial expressions by smiling
ILLUSTRATION BY JEAN-LUC BONIFAY
22 RUNNERSWORLD.COM
or frowning on our running economy or perceived effort while running–that is, until now.
Researchers at Ulster University in Northern Ireland and Swansea University in Wales asked a group of 24 runners to wear a breathing mask to measure oxygen consumption and then complete four six- minute running blocks on a treadmill while smiling and while frowning. The study, which was recently published in Psychology of Sport and Exercise, found that runners who smiled used less oxygen, ran more economically, and had a lower perceived rate of exertion than those who frowned and those in the control group.
“They were 2.8 percent more econom- ical when smiling than when frowning.” says Noel Brick, Ph.D., lecturer in sport and exercise psychology at the University of Ulster and coauthor of the study. The reason has to do with facial feedback. “When we make a facial expression, we may experience the emotional state we associate with the expression,” Brick says. “We associate smiling with happiness or enjoyment, states that make us more relaxed, so when we smile, we are con- sciously trying to relax. By adopting the facial expression of frowning, though, we are experiencing an emotional state of feeling tense or less relaxed.”
Other No–Brainer Boosts
SCIENCE SHOWS THESE
SIMPLE ALTERNATIVE TRICKO
CAN ALSO HELP YOU ACHIEVE PEAK PERFORMANCE,
Reframe your Inner dialogue by swapping out “I” for “You,” since first–person phrases can stress you out.
When you start to fatigue, say your go–to mantra out loud to give it extra power.
Cheer for other runners around you to improve your own spirits and results.
THINK OF IT LIKE THROWING YOUR BRAIN AN ENDORPHIN PARTY WHEN IT NEEDS IT.”
While a 2.8 percent improvement may sound inconsequential, it can translate to a roughly 2 percent improvement in perfor- mance time, says Brick. That means if you run a marathon in 4:20 or 4:45 (the aver- age marathon times for men and women, respectively), you’ll cross the finish line about five minutes faster, whereas if you run a 10K in 55 to 64 minutes, you can shave a full minute off your race time. And if you’re clocking under 25 minutes in a 5K, just smiling can help you cover the same distance 30 seconds faster, a meaningful result for very little effort. “Improvements in your running economy will be initially small, but a relaxed runner is an efficient runner,” Brick adds..
This little trick becomes especially useful for runners who need to conserve as much energy as possible over the course of a long–distance run. “Runners tend to tense up when holding higher paces specifically by tightening their jaw, which in turn can prevent the runner from benefiting from a nice, relaxed, and open airway,” says Meghan Takacs, a Road Runners Club of America–certified coach. “But when a runner is super–stiff, they will tire out a lot quicker.” Takacs says her experience has shown her that smiling is key because it brings on a positive mentality, and run- ning is as much a mental game as it is a physical one.
How genuine that smile is, it turns out, doesn’t even matter. Omar Sultan Haque, M.D., Ph.D., a psychiatrist and social scien- tist at Harvard Medical School who studies how biological, psychological, and social forces interact in health and healing, sug- gests you can fake it till you make it. “The concern about ‘faking it has within it the assumption that emotions always occur before facial expressions. But if the mus
cular expression of smiling can influence or even cause the feeling of relaxation, then planning to smile so that one feels relaxed is no more fake than smiling as a result of first feeling relaxed.”
Takacs reminds runners she works with to chill out: keep the muscles in their faces relaxed, quit gritting their teeth, and smile. “Think of it like throwing your brain an endorphin party when it needs it,” she says. “A smile instantly boosts positivity, relaxes the body, and in turn, makes you more self–aware. And when it comes to running, mentality and self–awareness take you a long way–literally.”
Although this study is small, previously conducted research also supports smiling to make efforts seem easier. A study by the School of Sport, Health and Exercise Sci- ences at Bangor University in Wales found that the activation of smiling or frowning is a good predictor of how hard an effort is. So if a hard effort makes you frown, then the opposite is also true; Frowning makes an effort feel harder, but smiling makes the effort feel easier.
In the end, mustering up a smile even when you don’t feel like it is just a matter of training, like cultivating any other habit, and could even be easier than pushing your legs to run through a cramp, Haque says. He suggests simply reconsidering our assumptions about the one–way relation- ship between feeling and smiling. Instead of believing we need to channel an emotion like happiness before smiling, remember that smiling itself can cause an emotion or feeling, so no channeling is needed, as the facial feedback hypothesis holds.
Besides, there’s not much to lose by giving grinning a shot. If nothing else, at least you’ll end up with better race. photos, f
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Trying to Lose My Religion/Turning the Page
Trying to Lose My Religion/Turning the Page
Turning the Page
Trying to Lose My Religion
My Greek Orthodox grandparents’ house had Byzantine icons of Jesus on virtually every wall. It’s not that they were die-hard religious people; they seldom went to church. But they did have religious rituals they stuck to. Burning incense in the house every Sunday was one. Bringing home koliva (a delicious dish of sweetened boiled wheat) after special services was another. They also insisted that if I wanted to be in God’s good books, I should make the sign of the cross every time I walked by a church or heard the church bell ring. And if I saw a priest on the streets? I should spring over to kiss his hand.
But as I got older, I learned about science, philosophy, logic and reason. I don’t fancy God as a long-bearded, old man with wizardlike powers anymore. And heaven and hell seem an oversimplified reward-and-punishment scheme.
There’s a catch, though. Every time I go to church, I’m still overcome by a mystifying experience that transcends my skepticism. I focus my eyes on the warm glow of the prayer candles, I inhale the intoxicating frankincense, and the reflections of the gold icons around the altar induce a sense of euphoria. I have no choice but to surrender my logic to the religious fervor around me. I lose my sense of self and instead feel oneness.
It turns out that while they were praying, participants had less blood flow to their prefrontal cortex and frontal lobe, the areas of the brain where complex behaviors such as planning and
expression of personality take place. “Hence, the feeling of surrender,” Newberg explains.
He and his team also observed a slowdown of blood to the parietal lobe, the area that integrates sensory information to help us form a sense of self. When activity in that part of the brain was dialed back, instead of their usual self-identity, the volunteers instead reported a feeling of “oneness” at the peak of their RSMEs.
Finally, the researchers saw a spike in the activity of the limbic system, the brain’s emotional center, and changes in the thalamus, which helps us shape our sense of reality. All of these results, Newberg says, are tied to what he calls the five core elements of religious experiences: sense of intensity and unity, transformation, clarity and a feeling of surrender.
Thinking back to my own uninvited mystical experiences, I felt swallowed by them and filled with emotion, while the details of my surroundings — the colors, the reflections, the shapes — were more defined, brighter and more intense than ever.
No Church Necessary
Mystical experiences also happen beyond the walls of temples and cathedrals. Psychoactive drugs will do the trick, too. So a team led by University of Zurich psychiatrist Michael Kometer looked at RSMEs triggered by drugs to learn more about the phenomenon.
Kometer and his team gave 50 people a moderate dose of psilocybin, the hallucinogen found in magic mushrooms that’s known to induce spiritual experiences. Then, the experts took brain scans of the volunteers. The results, published in 2015, showed that the drug-induced religious mindset was due to a change in activity in the default mode network — a region associated with how we relate information about the world to ourselves. So while the volunteers were tripping, they felt a sense of unity with their environment.
In a 2016 study, researchers used data from the Vietnam Head Injury Study, a longitudinal project following American male combat veterans with brain injuries. The experts compared this data with data from healthy combat veterans to see how specific brain regions were tied to reported mystical experiences.
Jordan Grafman, one of the study’s investigators, and his team found that injured veterans who experienced more RSMEs were more likely to have damage in an area of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This region regulates executive functions like planning, some aspects of memory, cognitive flexibility, inhibition and our ability to reason abstractly — all skills key to tamping down our inclination to use mysticism as an explanation for the world around us.
“Mystical experiences can lead to creative thoughts and artistic development.”
But while these functions might be hampered in people who have RSMEs, Grafman, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University, says there’s another side to this phenomenon. “Mystical experiences can lead to creative thoughts and artistic development,” he says. “So for most people, there is this search to find the right balance to have a meaningful existence.”
The Power to Change
But, is everyone wired in the same way for this balancing act? Or are some of us prone to being more religious?
“We’re all capable of religious and other forms of belief systems,” Grafman says. “But, I think, yes, there is sufficient evidence to indicate that, on average, some people are more neurologically wired to be religious.” However, he’s quick to point out that that wiring isn’t set in stone, thanks to neuroplasticity — our brain’s ability to change and shape neural pathways over time, which leads to new memories, skills and habits.
I feel content with my experiences at church. Though I’m still not sure if my tendency to have RSMEs is wired in me or just a byproduct of my early religious exposure, I can at least revel in what I learned about how they work. I know my mind will probably succumb to the experience, but at least I can rationalize it.
Trying to Lose My Religion/Turning the Page
Trying to Lose My Religion/Turning the Page
Trying to Lose My Religion/Turning the Page
Future Culture
Bearing Greek Gifts
Trying to Lose My Religion/Turning the Page
