There's a Word for That: 25 Expressions You Should Have in Your Vocabulary Recently I came across this amazing little Tumblr named ‘OtherWordly‘ – itself a play on words. It consists of a collection of strange and lovely words from different languages through different times. What I like most about this selection of consonants and vowels – little meaning-carrying packages of vibration – is that they all try to point to the unspeakable, the transient or the neglected. You can find my favourite words below – pick five that resonate most, write them down, yes seriously – go grab a pen -, make sure to learn them by heart, teach them to your inner voice and share them with others to guide our collective attention to what truly matters. 1 – Sophrosyne pronunciation | “so-frO-‘sU-nA Greek script | σωφροσύνη note | To everyone who is thinking “I want to get there” and also to everyone who is thinking “I’ll never get there”—you will. 2 – Vorfreude pronunciation | ‘for-froi-duh 3 – Numinous 4 – Nemophilist pronunciation | ne-‘mo-fe-list 5 – Sillage 6 – Erlebnisse 8 – Meliorism
Ceiling Height Can Affect How A Person Thinks, Feels And Acts -- ScienceDaily For years contractors, real estate agents and event planners have said that whether building, buying or planning an event, a higher or vaulted ceiling is always better. Are they right? Until now there has been no real evidence that ceiling height has any influence or advantage with consumers. But recent research by Joan Meyers-Levy, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management, suggests that the way people think and act is affected by ceiling height. Meyers-Levy and co-author Rui (Juliet) Zhu, assistant professor of marketing at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia and a Carlson doctoral alum, found that, depending on the situation, ceiling height will benefit or impair consumer responses. The paper “The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing People Use,” will be published in the August issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.
Human Emotions Map Shows How the Mind Affects the Body We often say that when we are in love we feel warmth all over our body or when we are angry the blood rushes to our head. As it turns out, these are not just words. Researchers from Finland for the first time presented the evidence that emotions are associated with a series of physiological changes in our body, which in fact are the same in all people, regardless of race or culture. The study, published in the journal «Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences», presents the findings in form of diagrams. Yellow color shows the points with the most increased activity, while blue color indicates the ones with the more reduced activity. People in love have a feeling of warmth, which leaves ‘unaffected’ the area around the knees and down. Researchers from several Finnish universities led by Lauri Nummenmaa and Enrico Glerean showed movies and read stories, which were designed to induce specific emotions, to 700 male and female volunteers of various races and cultures.
Strategies Quick Learners Use To Pick Up Anything Starred Up: The greatest prison drama since Scum? READ: The 10 best films from the London Film Festival 2013 This plotline comes directly from Asser’s own experiences. He worked at Feltham Young Offender Institution before running his self-styled “encounter groups” for violent inmates at Wandsworth Prison. To this day, he fervently believes that segregating these prisoners does nothing to resolve the problems of anyone involved. Encounter groups, however, “give us an opportunity to deal with these very violent guys, and give them a whole range of skills so they can go back on the same wing and live safely together. “That has to be better than separating them, which means a dispute festers and gets passed further down the line – to other prisons, when these guys meet up again, or back out in the community. Asser’s methods may be radical, but the current system doesn’t seem to be working. Asser, of course, believes in doing the opposite. Ray Winstone and Mick Ford in a scene from Scum, 1978 (Rex) LOOK: Sundance 2014 in pictures
Dark Matter Could Be Responsible for Asteroid Impacts on Earth The mysterious dark matter that fills the entire universe could make devastating asteroids and comets fall onto the Earth, causing mass extinctions, including the one of mankind. Americans physicists claim to have found evidence for the correctness of this theory in craters on the surface of the Earth. Lisa Randall and Matthew Reece from the University of Harvard, who made a related publication in the journal “Physical Review Letters“, believe that the threat is posed by a very dense disk of dark matter, located along the central plane of our galaxy and the thickness of which is about 35 light years. Our Sun, along with the Earth and the rest of the solar system, is continuously moving around the galactic center and at times crosses the disk of dark matter in its course. The two American physicists believe that this is the cause of the fact that our planet is occasionally bombarded by falls of catastrophic celestial bodies, which leave a greater or lesser imprint in the form of craters.
Lucid dreams and metacognition: Awareness of thinking; awareness of dreaming -- ScienceDaily To control one's dreams and to live 'out there' what is impossible in real life -- a truly tempting idea. Some persons -- so-called lucid dreamers -- can do this. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich have discovered that the brain area which enables self-reflection is larger in lucid dreamers. Thus, lucid dreamers are possibly also more self-reflecting when being awake. Lucid dreamers are aware of dreaming while dreaming. Sometimes, they can even play an active role in their dreams. Neuroscientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry have compared brain structures of frequent lucid dreamers and participants who never or only rarely have lucid dreams. The differences in volumes in the anterior prefrontal cortex between lucid dreamers and non-lucid dreamers suggest that lucid dreaming and metacognition are indeed closely connected.
Confronting Cognitive Dissonance Podcast: Play in new window | Download by James CorbettBoilingFrogsPost.com March 25, 2014 Have you or a loved one ever found yourself saying something like this? Or this? Or this? Then you might be suffering from cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance? The theory of cognitive dissonance was first posited by American social psychologist Leon Festinger in 1957 to explain the discomfort and mental stress that we feel when our beliefs, ideals or values don’t match up to reality. Festinger’s theory states that when people are in a state of dissonance, that is, when their beliefs or values don’t match up with their behaviour or experiences, they will adjust those beliefs or values, or even adjust their perception of reality, in order to achieve consonance. This theory helps us to understand how someone can both deny and admit the existence of a conspiracy in the very same breath. Indeed, 9/11 represents one of the greatest examples of cognitive dissonance in our own era.
Eight Signs You May Be Experiencing A Spiritual Awakening There are many different “awakenings” one can have, but here are 8 signs that are certainly on the right track. 1. You’re more in touch with your spiritual foundations through transformative meditation: You realize, as Jung noted, that “the experience of the Self is always a defeat for the Ego.” You’ve felt the powerful kundalini energy rising up from your roots, passing through the sacred waters of the sacral, basking in the fire of the solar plexus, breathing in the vital breath of the heart, absorbing the ethereal voice of the throat, pouring through the dissolution of the Third Eye, and spilling up and out like a mighty fountainhead into the greater cosmos. 2. Your heart is not heavy with materialistic burden. 3. Rumi, “Why do you stay in prison when the door is wide open?” You have a growing propensity toward breaking mental paradigms, stretching comfort zones and thinking outside of the current box. You enjoy each moment, relishing, in carpe-diem-ecstasy, your bountiful freedom. 4.
Teaching Critical Thinking Whether or not you can teach something as subjective as critical thinking has been up for debate, but a fascinating new study shows that it’s actually quite possible. Experiments performed by Stanford's Department of Physics and Graduate School of Education demonstrate that students can be instructed to think more critically. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of critical-thinking skills in modern society. The ability to decipher information and interpret it, offering creative solutions, is in direct relation to our intellect.2 The study took two groups of students in an introductory physics laboratory course, with one group (known as the experimental group) given the instruction to use quantitative comparisons between datasets and the other group given no instruction (the control group). Comparing data in a scientific manner; that is, being able to measure one’s observations in a statistical or mathematical way, led to interesting results for the experimental group.
Teaching and Broken Trust - Reality Sandwich Here I was, a Caucasian female from the most northern part of the Midwest, born into a well off and supportive family, given all the advantages to jump into the conventional way of American life, and I had chosen the path of shamanism. Actually, it chose me. It started to slowly slink into my life like a jaguar stealthily approaching its prey right when I began my meditation practice. A couple months into my practice, the enormous beast that now dictates my every step gobbled me up whole, riding the waves of emotional extremes and touching every space in between, living a painfully blissful life full of gratitude. In the beginning, I was stepping into the void to embark on a journey that I knew I was meant to do, and yet I had no elders or mentors to guide me. It’s the beginner’s mind full of childlike curiosity that keeps us humble and fuels our evolution. This story is for the safety and awareness of other women out there stepping into their true calling.
7 Things Self-actualized People Don’t Do “What a man can be, he must be. This need we call Self-actualization.” “Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them. Life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” –Gabriel García Márquez The term “self-actualization” was originally coined by the theorist Kurt Goldstein for the motive of realizing one’s full potential, but was brought fully to light by Abram Maslow in his hierarchy of needs theory of human development. It is the self-realization of one’s individuated maturity in balance with an interdependent spirit. Wayne Dyer 1) They don’t fear change “Nature will not let us stay in any one place for too long. Self-actualized people realize that there is no permanence. Locus of Control 2.) Self-actualized people understand that not everything is under their control. Worthy 3) They don’t feel unworthy “We are what we repeatedly do. Self-actualized people never feel sorry for themselves. Take risks The obstacle is the path
10 facts you should know about Vincent van Gogh 10 facts (and a video) on the prolific genius who died a relatively unknown artist. 1. Vincent van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, Netherlands. He was named after his grandfather and his stillborn brother who died one year before Van Gogh was born. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Check out the full TED-Ed Lesson “The unexpected math behind Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” that these GIFs were pulled from: Numbness: A woman’s Army daze When we arrived in Germany in the winter of 2003, the bottom two floors of our barracks were empty, a ghost town. The infantrymen usually housed there were deployed to Afghanistan for some unknown number of months or years. Most nights, we third-floor dwellers trudged down one sticky flight of stairs to drink Jack, bake Tombstone pizzas and make out on dirty couches. Months passed like this, drinking in the hollow spaces left by men more useful than us, braver. We girls grew hard and quiet behind the eyes. In March, our unit traveled in Humvees to a forested range. It was warm, barbecue weather, when the infantry soldiers came back. One of these boys was named Adam. One day, Adam told me his unit was being deployed to Iraq again. After an honorable discharge in November 2005, I moved to Seattle to study political science. But soon I discovered that some part of me had been stretched too far and would not snap back to a life that didn’t burn hot, bright and quick.