Maui had a yellow ball
"Maui's Mini Tail"
Maui had a yellow ball.
Maui loved to chase a small yellow ball around the house. He would grab it with his paws and throw it up in the air, or bat it across the floor! He loved playing with the yellow ball, constantly chasing it around the house and batting it across the room.
I should have learned a thing about feeling good from Maui but it took a book to teach me what Maui knew.
Peggy had a beach ball
When I was working with patients with major mental health problems (Schizophrenia, severe depression, manic depression), I read The Biopsychology of Mood & Arousal by Richard Thayer. I was surprised to learn that if you do a brisk activity for only 10 min, your mood goes up and stays up for 4 hours. It sounded almost too easy. I found a beach ball to put it to the test.
At the beginning of the next patient's group therapy session I asked everyone to rate their current mood on a scale of 1 to 10. One = horrible/awful/terrible/bad. Ten = wonderful/elated/ joyful/good.
I tossed the beach ball in the air and everyone joined in batting the ball to each other. Sometimes we missed, sometimes we got hit in the head, but everyone swung at the ball, waved their hands around and had a little exercise. AFTER 10 MINUTES we stopped and rated mood again.
Take a look at the chart below showing how each patient rated their mood at the beginning of the session, in blue, and where each patient rated their mood after tossing the ball for 10 minutes, in green.
Would the mood elevation last? After 3 1/2 hours, everyone rated their mood again. All moods were still up with one exception. It had worked making my own mood elevated.
The chart below shows each patients mood before the ball toss started, in blue, and where each patient rated their mood after 3 1/2 hours, in purple.
The average improvement in mood was 30%! In TEN MINUTES.
Of course, negative events can bring mood down again. (as happened to the one patient - letter i - in the group) but this is one of my favorite "tricks" to stay happy.
Maui always knew . . . playing ball is good for you.
THE SCIENCE
In his 1989 book The Biopsychology of Mood and Arousal, Robert E. Thayer discusses how 10 minutes of brisk exercise improves mood for four hours. He describes how each of us has a daily biorhythm of ups and downs in energy (There's a chart in the book on how to figure out your own biorhythm).
Exercise is shown to boost endorphins and the neurotransmitter norepinephrine both of which improve mood.
Not only does exercise grow your muscles, it also grows neurons in your brain. Such neuron growth is associated with improved mood. Research shows:
Regular exercise can relieve depression just as well as medication over a 4 month period, and even better after 6 months.
I personally use this concept to get and keep my own mood up. Ten minutes of activity is a cheap price for creating 4 hours of feeling good (or at the very least, feeling ok).
(PA)
How do you elevate your mood? Let us know in the comments.
Click here for Time article It’s All in the Nerves: How to Really Treat Depression by Maia Szalavitz
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