7. August 2009 by John Schinnerer.

 From a press release from the U.S. Army

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Aug. 5, 2009) — The Army has been working with the University of Pennsylvania to develop master resiliency training that will soon be taught to Soldiers, family members and Army civilians.

The resiliency training is part of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, which focuses on the five dimensions of strength: emotional, social, spiritual, family and physical.

“As people develop their holistic fitness strength, they develop psychological resilience to not only bounce back, but to thrive under challenging conditions,” said Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, CSF director.

“We’ve been working for about the last year on Comprehensive Soldier Fitness,” said Gen. George W. Casey Jr., chief of staff of the Army. “It’s designed to bring mental fitness up to the same level that we give to physical fitness. In this era of persistent conflict, we’ve found that the vast majority of Soldiers deploying have a positive growth experience because they’re exposed to something very difficult and they succeed. Our goal through Comprehensive Soldier Fitness is to ensure all Soldiers have the skills to grow and succeed.”

Master resiliency training is being adapted from the Positive Psychology Program at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. UPENN instructs teachers (middle and high school) on how to impart resiliency skills to their students during the school year. More than a dozen scientific studies have shown positive results in students whose teachers have been trained in this program - including better grades, less dropouts and less behavioral issues.

Potential master resiliency trainers participated in an informational session in May. At this session 32 Soldiers and Army civilians received the civilian version of the UPENN course. In June and July a smaller focus group attended the course in an effort to tailor the current curriculum for Army use. Another training pilot program is scheduled for Aug. 10-19 at the school.

“The training is informative and motivational,” said Dana Whitis, an Army employee who attended the five-day course.

“Resilience training encourages a person to take a mental note of their past behavior and present situation and promotes alternative ways to view the occurrence,” explained Whitis, who works for the Family, Morale Welfare and Recreation Command. She went on to say that resiliency training will eventually be offered to Army family members.

“It will augment existing Army family program structure and programs,” Whitis said. “I look forward to family members receiving resilience training.”

Command Sgt. Maj. Teresa King, who is stationed at Fort Jackson, S.C., said the training has equipped her “to be more resolute in bouncing back from adversities and instead of using a negative or pessimistic approach, I now view what I decide are negative situations as an opportunity for growth, through positive thinking.”

King said she is “happier” since the training and feels she has a better understanding of her peers, Soldiers, friends and family members.

The Army is now incorporating practices learned from the UPENN program as the building of MRT continues.

MRT will operate as a “train-the-trainer” program, and aims to turn participants into fitness experts able to train others and strengthen the force as a whole. MRT will eventually be taught during basic combat training, at officer schools, and throughout all levels of the Army, Cornum said.

In the first five days of the MRT course, students learn the basic tenants of resiliency training. The remaining days focus on how to teach the material.

Sgt. Maj. James Whitfield, who attended the five-day seminar at UPenn, said the “train-the-trainer” program covers subjects such as avoiding thinking traps, building resiliency and surveying individuals’ strong points and “not-so-strong points.”

The course overview received great reviews from the participants who said it has potential to be beneficial to the leader-Soldier bond. The Army will continue to adapt the program to make it more relevant for Soldiers as the curriculum-development continues, officials said.

Phase two of the program calls for establishing an MRT school to train leaders (squad leaders, platoon sergeants, etc.) on how to impart resiliency skills through daily education and training. Phase three will allow for voluntary participation by family members and Army civilians.

“The Army is committed to a true prevention model aimed at the entire force, not only Soldiers and civilians in the throes of a crisis,” said Lt. Gen. James D. Thurman, deputy chief of staff, G-3/5/7.

CSF recognizes the absolute necessity of a comprehensive, coordinated effort to enhance the fitness and resiliency of our Army, particularly important during this era of persistent conflict and most importantly into the foreseeable future. Ultimately, Soldier fitness in the comprehensive sense is, and has always been, the business of leaders.

http://www.army.mil/-news/2009/08/05/25494-army-developing-master-resiliency-training/

Posted in Mindfulness, Resiliency, Consciousness, Assertiveness, Hope, Emotion & learning, Curiosity, Gratitude, Managing Sadness, Managing Anxiety, Dr. John Schinnerer, Managing stress, Forgiveness, Creativity, Guide to Self, Emotional management, Happiness, Anxiety, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

7. August 2009 by John Schinnerer.

August 7th, 2009

Louis Armstrong sang, “When you’re smilin’, the whole world smiles with you.” Romantics everywhere may be surprised to learn that psychological research has proven this sentiment to be true — merely seeing a smile (or a frown, for that matter) will activate the muscles in our face that make that expression, even if we are unaware of it. Now, according to a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, simply reading certain words may also have the same effect.

Psychologists Francesco Foroni from VU University Amsterdam and Gün R. Semin from the University of Utrecht conducted two experiments to see if emotion language has an influence on facial muscle activity. In the first experiment, a group of students read a series of emotion verbs (e.g., “to smile,” “to cry”) and adjectives (e.g., “funny,” “frustrating”) on a monitor, while the activity of their zygomatic major (the muscle responsible for smiles) and corrugator supercilii (which causes frowns) muscles were measured.

The results showed that reading action verbs activated the corresponding muscles. For example, “to laugh” resulted in activation of the zygomatic major muscle, but did not cause any response in the muscles responsible for frowning. Interestingly, when presented with the emotion adjectives like “funny” or “frustrating” the volunteers demonstrated much lower muscle activation compared to their reactions to emotion verbs. The researchers note that muscle activity is “induced in the reader when reading verbs representing facial expressions of emotion.”

Can this innate bodily reaction affect our judgments? In another experiment, volunteers watched a series of cartoons and were subliminally shown emotion verbs and adjectives after each one. They were then asked to rate how funny they thought the cartoons were. Half of the participants held a pen with their lips, to prevent them from smiling, while the remaining participants did not have their muscle movement blocked.

The results reveal that even when emotion verbs are presented subliminally, they are able to influence judgment — volunteers found cartoons to be funnier when they were preceded by smiling verbs than if they were preceded by frowning-related verbs. However, this effect only occurred in the volunteers who were able to smile — volunteers who had muscle movement blocked did not show this relationship between emotion verbs and how funny they judged the cartoons as being.

The results of these experiments reveal that simply reading emotion verbs activates specific facial muscles and can influence judgments we make. The researchers note these findings suggest that “language is not merely symbolic, but also somatic,” and they conclude that “these experiments provide an important bridge between research on the neurobiological basis of language and related behavioral research.”

Source: Association for Psychological Science (news : web)

Source for article http://www.physorg.com/news168858742.html

So if you’re stressed and want to become less so, read the following words…

relax

content

peaceful

rested

calm

If you are angry and want to change your emotional state read the following words…

happy

engaged

loving

caring

connected

excited

eager

It’s as easy as riding a bike!

Smile during your fantastic weekend !

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Posted in Awareness, Hope, Mindfulness, Gratitude, Curiosity, Danville CA, Emotion & learning, Science of love, The human brain, Alexithymia, Happiness, Anxiety, Emotional IQ, Emotional mind, Emotional management, Consciousness, Managing Sadness, Managing stress | Print | No Comments »

7. August 2009 by John Schinnerer.

All hail the power of thought!

‘ScienceDaily (Aug. 6, 2009) — Positive thoughts bring positive things to people and it’s well documented these expectations have helped people recover from a number of health conditions. But until now, not much was known about the correlation between that belief and the recovery from injuries like whiplash.

Two University of Alberta researchers and a colleague from Sweden have found some answers to that question in three different studies on expectations for recovery.

Linda Carroll, in the School of Public Health, looked at a cohort of over 6,000 adults with traffic-related whiplash injuries. She found that those that had positive outlooks towards their recovery actually recovered over three times faster than those who did not.

Dejan Ozegovic, also in the School of Public Health, looked at predications around returning to work, using the same cohort. Positive return-to-work assumptions meant people rated themselves as “recovered” 42 per cent faster than those who had more negative expectations.

Lena Holm, a Swedish researcher who is working at the U of A this summer, found that those study participants in Sweden who had low expectations of complete recovery were four times more likely to still feel symptoms of the injury six months later.

The researchers were surprised by the findings, which showed that the severity of the injury did not have an impact on the recovery times.’

Full story here http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090805182749.htm

Posted in Hope, Awareness, Positive expectations, Mindfulness, Resiliency, Dr. John Schinnerer, Guide to Self, Consciousness, Realistic optimism | Print | No Comments »