The below is a direct cut and paste from an email a girlfriend sent to me- it's doing the cyber-space rounds. I'm not sure of the truth behind the 'Stanford lecture' part but what I do know is that there is nothing that comes close to spending time with your girlfriends on the 'feel-good' front. We don't need a male psychiatrist from Standford to tell us that we feel better after spending time with our sisters and friends; that we feel happier, more connected, centred and healthy.
But if his opinion is what our partner needs to stop moaning about long chatty phone calls or uproarous laughter from the living room, or late night tissue runs to a friend in need then let him read on...
I just finished taking an evening class at Stanford. The last lecture was on the mind-body connection-the relationship between stress and disease.
The speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that one of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be married to a woman whereas for a woman, one of the best things she could do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends.
At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.
Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences. Physically this quality “girlfriend time" helps us to create more serotonin-a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling of well being.
Women share feelings whereas men often form relationships around activities. They rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf? Yes. But their feelings?-rarely.
Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with our sisters/mothers, and evidently that is very good for our health. He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging or working out at a gym.
There's a tendency to think that when we are "exercising" we are doing something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends, we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged--not true.
In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical health as smoking!
If you don't already have plans to do this at some point this weekend, go and connect with a girlfriend/sister/mother. Spend time with them and know it's doing you both the world of good.
with love
K x
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Lisa Cherry
said:
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... Absolutely! You know it's my only form of breathing. Without my women, I am nothing....x |
Kirsten
said:
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... Your girlfriends are a reflection of all that is you- remember that gorgeous girl, especially when you speak highly of them x |
