Only 4 Chords Needed:

All you need is four chords and a means of selling a song and voila! Enjoy - some classics in this youtube mix!

How the City Hurts Your Brain

I haven't blogged yet this year - still numb from all the Christmas festivities & food perhaps. I came across an article in the Boston Globe on How the City Hurts Your Brain that I thought was worth exploring & posting. Here's excerpt:

Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it's long been recognized that city life is exhausting -- that's why Picasso left Paris -- this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so.

The article goes on to note that humans were designed to interact with nature and that even simply seeing trees helps patients in hospitals recover faster - providing a mental break from a harsh urban environment. Here's another tidbit I found interesting,

This research is also leading some scientists to dabble in urban design, as they look for ways to make the metropolis less damaging to the brain. The good news is that even slight alterations, such as planting more trees in the inner city or creating urban parks with a greater variety of plants, can significantly reduce the negative side effects of city life. The mind needs nature, and even a little bit can be a big help.

I'm about to take a group of students on a mission trip to inner-city Winnipeg and I've noticed that there is only so and so much I can take of living there. In part - it is the chaos of organizing & transporting people to different areas of the city that drains me but I'm used to being near nature. Even though I live in a small city - my backdoor literally exists into a park area.

I also have found that spending time at our parents cottage in the Whiteshell provides me with an outlet for stress & consistently is the best environment for me to actually relax. During my graduate studies - I skied every evening after completing research for a paper and I found it was the only way to shut my brain down effectively.

This article is a reminder for my need for interaction with nature in order to better balance my life and I urge everyone to take advantage of your escapes to God's Creation! Shalom!