In the first Pillars of Health Wisdom post we reviewed stress, how to combat it in real life and then we showed how some sources of data and research gave us insight into how to deal with our busy lives for a healthier and longer life expectancy.

We also encountered the new word, positivity and how it can be utilized for better individual health, mainly through meditation exercises.

This post will show other pillars of health for the empowered volunteer but it will also move past the individual and embrace the greater good of society beyond what we saw in The Status Syndrome, How Social Standing Affects our Health and Longevity by Michael Marmot in the last post.

Meditation has been documented in the history of mankind for thousands of years.

It seems that the western traditions did not embrace this practice nearly as early or as readily as the eastern cultures did. Philo of Alexandria is perhaps the first westerner to really investigate the “spiritual exercises” that we now call meditation. A Roman philosopher Plotinus also developed a system of meditative techniques we are told but they did not catch on with Christian meditations.

Saint Augustine also delved into meditations but he was in the end not satisfied with the results.

Meditation in the Old Testament is seen as influencing Judaism as well, with Jewish culture and writing seemingly always containing some form of meditative tradition. This would put Christians on firm footing for the use of meditation as a spiritual exercise, even if it was not found in the Bible.

Several translations of Genesis have the word meditation included in Genesis 24:63. This is true for all the translations that this author reviewed except for the Revised English Bible of 1989.

Even the online Hebrew translation has the word “meditation” in the verse, so I am inclined to go with the translations of those who have carried the Torah from the days of antiquity to the present day and to discount the one Bible translation which omitted the term.

This should end any claim that meditation is solely the process of eastern traditions and the practice of such exercises will make the practicing member suddenly a lapsed Christian. If someone lapses their Christian beliefs due to meditation, those beliefs were already on wobbly supports before the the individual conducted any meditation practices.

Meditation has more than just some benefits to mental concentration and an improved vagal tone connecting one’s heart to their brain. But if that was all it gave practicing members it would still be worth the effort.

The kind of meditation studied by Barbara L. Fredrickson, PH. D. in her book, Love 2.0 was of a Buddhist tradition called Loving-kindness Meditation (LKM). She found that, “The fact that reflection on social connection appeared to penetrate the body to affect enduring heart rhythms made us take a closer look.” She is referring to the medical health benefits here.

They found that the physical vagal tone improvements and other aspects on health were verified. These were rigorous scientific studies, with double blind population groups.

They also found what many church goers already knew, if a group does something in unison, their heart rates often synchronize. Evidence suggests that when a group synchronizes like this, they broaden their minds collectively.

Negative emotions narrow your views of the world, positive emotions broaden your views of the world. Meditation is one direct method of raising your positive emotions!

When this and other aspects of meditation happen people often feel more connected to each other and to the world as a whole. That concept alone has tremendous implications for society if we could just get enough of a population density to employ the techniques.

Fredrickson writes, “Clearly something powerful was embedded within this simple thought exercise.” She continues, “From the perspective of emotions science, LKM is not the least bit supernatural”.

Meditation in the United States has had a mixed history. The Beatles were known to have used Transcendental Meditation (TM), which had ups and downs according to how prominent the profile of the latest celebrity membership was at that time.

Some studies found merit in the practice but then some claims by the leader for “flying” were simply not true, at least for the observed physical body.

Claims of spirit flying or astral projection have yet to find any study validation that I am aware of. Things like this and others, popularized in books such as Wisdom of the Mystic Masters, by Joseph J. Weed tended to give new age thinking a bad reputation, something that meditation often found itself included into even if it was unrelated to crystal therapy and other such practices on the new age front.

Practitioners of martial arts brought versions of meditation to the United States after WWII. These forms of meditation were highly influenced by the style that it was learned under, with the associated cultural leanings that accompany any such culture transfers. Karate and Kung Fu members tended to reflect their styles in their meditation practices.

I learned meditation personally in 1979 from a Hopkido practitioner who was my dorm neighbor in college. He was an anthropology major and he was a black belt who usually refused to teach others in the dorm due to the aggression many in our house exhibited.

When some of us did persuade him to work with us, we were taught meditation and breathing katas, which were simply an arrangement of moves coordinated with the forceful intake or exhaling of breaths.

Meditation was focusing on an object, often a candle that flickered if one was practiced enough with an immobile object. The idea was to strengthen one’s individual ability to focus.

Every martial art style seemed to have meditation in it. Ninja’s, popular in the 1990′s had several levels if the books and printed material were to be believed. Most martial artists I knew liked the meditation but declined to follow any of the eastern religious underpinnings.

When I was in boot camp, one die hard gym rat had aspirations of becoming a U.S Navy SEAL. We constantly saw him sitting next to his “rack” meditating after normal working hours. The Christian cross he wore certainly did not reflect any eastern religious traditions either. He claimed a high accomplishment in a martial arts style that I was unfamiliar with at that time so I don’t recall which one it was. I remember him as the most even keeled guy I ever met. I don’t know if he made it into the Teams, but his chances seemed pretty good to us at the time.

He was sure in control of his emotions during boot camp and he could do hundreds of push ups, on demand. He said it was all due to his mental training, much of which he credited to meditation.

Also popular the last few decades is the Edgar Cayce meditation techniques, which are available online. The Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE) is a very fun place to visit, located in Va. Beach, Va. Edgar Cayce was a Christian clergyman who became known as the sleeping prophet.

LKM is a better scheme of meditation than I was taught for what I need in the hear and now and also for what I am suggesting for the empowered volunteers out there. It seems also to be the most studied version of meditation too.

While improving your focus is worthy and achievable, it is more helpful to achieve the health improvements associated with this specific type of meditation. There are many people who need to register a much needed break from the stress induced impact of their job or their commute or other stress producing portions of their lives. They need LKM and most have never heard of it.

Today, it is very hard to have too many stress busting processes. LKM is a great technique that works and has great value for every single person who has excess stress.

The key to LKM is that it produces a measurable effect on the human body reflected in the body language which studies with solid empirical evidence have reflected, “will take whatever positive feelings you generate in LKM are likely to imbue the rest of your day with more positivity as well.”

Furthermore, the “Pathways through which LKM seeds subsequent moments of positivity resonance are wholly physical.” Fredrickson continues, “Since nonverbal gestures are contagious, your openness also allows others to become more open and relaxed. Meeting each other with openness like this increases the odds that the two of you will come into sync.”

If you ask any salesman, they would love to have a method of generating more rapport with their clients. Every businessperson would love to go into meetings generating and emitting nonverbal signals embedded with positive feelings which the other members would pick up on and react more positively to, hopefully helping his or her presentation close positively. Teachers would love to have their students receive the messages more deeply due to positive messaging transfer too.

Things usually go better with positive vibrations!

The message received through a more positive delivery method always has a better chance of being received more positively, and therefore it also has a better chance of being accepted.

The old saying, it’s not what you say, but how you say it really resonates when you used LKM.

Everyone would love to have more positive interactions in their lives! This is the one thing that an individual can do that can ensure your positive emotions will be generated and received by many if not most of those around you.

Every empowered volunteer should carefully consider this technique for their own health as well as their impact in spreading the volunteer message. If you present your message in a better tone, it will be heard more clearly and it will be received more readily.

So LKM gives the meditating member better health over time and also puts the member into a better state for presenting the empowered volunteer message! This increases the potential for success in membership building, thus helping the charity too. Everyone wins under these circumstances.

Below are links to studies which are current and give compelling reasons for engaging in positive mental training for better individual health and also for better results in interactions with other humans.

1) Can Meditation Change Compassionate Behavior?

http://www.mindandlife.org/can-meditation-change-compassionate-behavior/

2) Meditation causes compassionate action?

 http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/meditation_causes_compassionate_action

3) Morality and Meditation?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/opinion/sunday/the-morality-of-meditation.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=1&

So take heart if you read this article dear empowered volunteer.

The next time you meditate, know that you’re not just benefiting yourself, you’re also benefiting your neighbors, community members and as-yet-unknown strangers by increasing the odds that you’ll feel their pain when the time comes, and act to lessen it as well.

4) This link is a deep study which many people may find too much to digest. It is offered for those who like to really dig into the material and know that the findings are sufficient to produce the effect claimed.

http://brainimaging.waisman.wisc.edu/publications/2013/WengCompassionPsychSci.pdf

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Stress moderation is at the top of the pillars of health care wisdom for the empowered volunteer. You can actually die from stress related effects.

When volunteers think of how to work their time around volunteer projects they don’t automatically think of stress. Their passion for the volunteer group or the charity supported by the group helps them prioritize their emotions and their time management. Simply put, they make it work no matter how much effort it takes to get the job done.

For the empowered volunteer, what is the incentive for someone who is not already involved in the represented group to join, pending their busy, busy, busy schedule? Obviously if they have a passion for the charity they might be persuaded. But what if they are not passionate for the charity? What then? They say that they are too stressed and that they don’t have any time! Then the empowered volunteer needs to refer to the pillars of health wisdom!

The empowered volunteer is all about helping people. That must be the first priority, above all other things.

If you put people first, the other things will find a way to resolve themselves, one way or another. Happy passionate people solve problems and they also brag about the experience. They also have better health, statistically speaking. First, let’s tackle the stress issue and then we will address the other health studies and how they affect our message.

Stress is manageable in our lives. But for those who find themselves under extreme stress they should explore the science discoveries from the power of positivity.

This topic was addressed by Barbara L. Fredrickson, Ph. D. in her book, nicely named Positivity! In it she presents credible and robust scientific evidence on how proper meditation helps humans deal with stress. Then she moves on to give concrete examples of how to meditate and other features in order to help drive your health benefits from lowering the effects from stress on your body. She has placed guided meditations and other simple tools on her website, which is very easy to use and worthy of a visit for anyone who would like to feel better in our stressful world. This kind of easy to do it yourself stress modification is why Dr. Fredrickson’s book and website are a pillar of wisdom for the empowered volunteer.

http://www.positivityratio.com/index.php

Once you go to the site, use the tools tab or the take the test tab and see how you are faring on an individual level. With over two decades of research on this subject along with tons of behavioral science supporting data going back several more decades it is worth checking it out and seeing if you can benefit. To be honest, everyone can benefit unless you just don’t want to let it help you. Meditation has been used by many civilizations for thousands of years, from Christians like St. Augustine to Chinese Kung Fu monks.

Never underestimate how you can improve your life with small changes that affect your health in a magnified way beyond the small time and effort you expend.

Decades of data from research into how social status affects your health are also available and helpful for the empowered volunteer to understand for their pillars of health wisdom. Scientists use the term social economic status (SES) for these kinds of studies and conversations about them. SES is in general terms an individual’s social level in society. Usually this is divided into three areas, low or working class, middle class and upper middle class or upper class status levels. Low class is the working people, usually living from pay check to pay check. Poverty level is below this group.

Middle class is the group who was lifted by many factors after WWII, but one of the most controversial was the GI Bill, which allowed many of those returning from the war to attend college and then better their lives with better paying jobs and more upward mobility. In this case, a veterans group was instrumental in helping pass this important piece of legislation, one which in looking back historians and economics agree was a huge success.

Harry W. Colmery, a former national commander of the American Legion and former Republican National Chairman, is credited with drawing up the first draft of the GI Bill.

Some people reading this will be surprised that a former Republican Party National Chairman could have been involved with promoting a middle class path towards education back in the days after WWII. Back then, only the very rich could afford college. But keep in mind, political parties change over time and their policies change over time too.

The GOP today is not your grandfather’s party! The current Republican Party thinking on education is reflective of some of those changes in mindset regarding middle class education at the high school level as well as for higher education and is thus beyond the scope of this post.

SES is very important to the empowered volunteer from the point of those who are least likely to be volunteering and which also can benefit the most from volunteering, health wise.

Upper middle class is more often defined as someone who has physical assets which generate enough income so that if that person suddenly stopped their regular employment they could still live off their passive income. This status level is worthy of achievement and is the focus of another pillar of wisdom, that of wealth which will be addressed in a forthcoming post. For our purposes here, the higher the status the better the likely hood of good health is expected.

Michael Marmot, in his ground breaking book 2004 book, The Status Syndrome, How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity has reviewed and distilled the data results from over three decades of studies in order to write about how we can benefit from this knowledge.

One key to his book was that if someone has little autonomy over their lives, as most working class people find themselves, then they are more likely to have lower health.

This is true for many countries beyond the United States too. It goes further though, for those people reporting “the greater the degree of inequality of material deprivation and of income, the worse the health.” He found that low control over one’s life to be the big central factor that linked everything to health, happiness, etc.

In America’s past labor unions were often the only way for laborers to exert any form of control over their lives. Before the unions formed, safety and other factors we take for granted today were not common in many industries.

For those people then and even today in many industries, having some control over their life could determine their future health. Volunteering is one path towards restoring some form of control over one’s life if it is not found elsewhere. Each person can control how much they volunteer and where, and to what extent for each group they join.

This kind of life control opportunity can help them if they are in a job where they have little or no control over their lives. 

The main thing here is that no matter what your station in life, you can do things to help your health and your mental or emotional wellbeing. The positivity ratio is so simple once you start that you will wonder why you have not heard of it before. I would suggest starting with the guided meditation and then moving on where ever you are comfortable. This tool is absolutely awesome for its potential to help people with high stress jobs.

The health harming aspects attributed to many working class jobs should surprise no one. They have been apparent for generations of American workers. From swing shifts to heated environments too hot to stay in for very long to extended nursing hours for patient coverage. The potential ways to combat the negative effects seem to have escaped the general public’s notice, until now hopefully. Even middle class American’s can use this information to their advantage so that the stress from the job doesn’t inflict further harm to your health.

Knowing the health harming effects of low autonomy is important for the health of employees and management.

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American’s are not a classless society as we often think we are. This was observed by Michael Marmot in his book, The Status Syndrome, How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity. In this book he mentions that in their sports affiliations Americans break along class lines according to the size of the balls used in the games, with the smaller balls indicative of the  higher status or class of society. So golf, tennis, baseball, football (American, not soccer) and then basketball designating the status of the fans. This is not true for other parts of the world, China or India or even in Europe.

This is interesting in understanding sports in America. Now polo is not mentioned, but rest assured it is so exclusive and expensive to participate in that it is also high status and very high class. The rest of the major sports played with a ball follow the pattern in the United States.

Canada’s issues in national pride, obstructed in unity by two languages seems to unite around their hockey teams. Soccer is the dominant sport in the rest of the world, bar local sports which are not world wide. Ever see a soccer fan without passion? Just as in America Green Bay Packer fans are avid, so are soccer fans around the world.

So how does this affect the empowered volunteer? Understanding the society which you are prospecting in is always a good idea. So how do you use this in your prospecting? Hopefully it was addressed in your SWOT analysis, but if not let’s try and help you out now.

When you are prospecting for members, some are going to have issues with regular times or even where the meetings or campaigns for the charity are held or some other thing. It happens with busy people and it happens with regular people too. They could be working some kind of swing shift or even working for themselves or as sales people who respond on a moments notice to help with the sale. Tons of American’s have varying schedules and that hurts your efforts.

In your SWOT analysis hopefully your group(s) put provisions for contacting community members who have influence to help your cause. The members may be friends of some of your membership and if so hopefully that person takes on the task of asking for joining your cause, whatever the capacity they can provide even if it is not joining and attending all of the functions. These include but are not limited to Mayors, city officials, county officials, members of other charities that in any way associate with your cause, and whoever else made the list.

Do not forget friendly faith groups, school officials and teachers, community colleges, universities near by, technical schools for adults, hospitals officials, and any other groups who are community minded and not in conflict with your message or cause.

Bottom line, all members of society can volunteer, some volunteer their money when they can’t volunteer their time. Both types are helpful to the cause, but the volunteer who gives of their time gains the connections and the social interactions which help their health. Use both types of volunteers to the best of your ability.

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Social network world wide

Michael Marmot, in his book “The Status Syndrome, How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity” makes the case through massive data gleaned from many sources over 30 years that health can be determined by social status, with the level of integration of a society as a predictor of the health of that society.

This idea was first predicted by pioneering Sociologist Durkheim and while now called Social Capital many studies find the connection valid as a predictor of social health as well as potential aid for the individual participant to learn from and apply for their own lives.

In other words, the better connected a society is the better the level of trust and the better the health of the society as a whole would be expected. This does not always mean the rich are expected to have better health on the macro level or whole society level. Many other things enter into this line of thinking. How close an individual is to others in society for instance plays a huge role in their life expectancy.

Life expectancy can also be extended as a society during wars as demonstrated by Amartya Sen who found that in Britain during the war years an increase in life expectancy existed and was thought to be from the positive effects on societies’ social integration which directly reflected mortality rates.  War brought folks together in a way that focused their efforts and their common cause, resulting in longer life for society as a whole despite the deaths from the war.

Durkheim, a father of Sociology studied social integration from religious, domestic, and political points of view with regards to suicide rates. His findings supported his conclusions that the more integrated a society was the less the rate of suicide would be. Specifically in 19^th century Europe he found that Protestant countries in Europe were often found to have higher rates of suicide than countries where the population was mostly Catholic.

In general the rates of suicide were even lower for Jewish populations. His conclusions from these studies were that the strong and unified society for the Jewish population and also for the Catholic population supported people and resulted in lower suicide rates than the Protestant populations where a more individualist approach to life was observed.

Please note this does not endorse one religion over another, it cites how populations in specific countries implemented their respective religions and how that part of their lives impacted their health.

Durkheim went on to study the effects of marriage on populations and the effects of war on total population suicide rates as well. He concluded that social integration was one of the biggest factors in not only the health of a population but in the individuals as well. Now called social capital and studied for the last 30 years or so before Marmot’s book in 2004, social integration can be applied by the individual confidently for both status raising health impact as well as strategies for health improvement through social connections.

The bottom line is that individuals can do things to increase their social status. They can do things to increase their social capital.

They can also significantly raise their health expectations by positively driving these aspects of their lives!

If you take the proper actions, you can improve your chances of not only extending your life but having a better quality of life. Many people would expect that the rich would as a society outlive the poorer societies. Money is not the single best predictor of longer life however when it comes to societies.

Ichiro Kawaichi from Harvard University was a researcher who took on this question on the relationship between the differences in social capital and the good or low health expectations. His team used surveys to quantify the level of trust in groups and then looked for the expected results of health levels. Societies that can be viewed as high in social cohesion like Japan who is rich, Kerala which is poor, or in the middle like Costa Rica have better health than others with equal wealth but less social cohesion, concludes Marmot in his book, The Status Syndrome. So the amount of money of a society is less a predictor of health than many people would think.

Another aspect to health is the impact on individuals who have low control over their lives, or at least a perception of that low control.

Marmot writes, “Furthermore, the greater the degree of inequality of material deprivation and of income, the worse the health”. Low control was the link in this issue between health and living poor. Generally speaking, the poor view their lives as having less control and the well-off view their lives as having more control over their individual decisions.

This concept of health and income inequality with regards to an aging population is something we in the United States will confront in greater degrees in our future as our economies seem to be driving a greater economic wedge between the poor and the rich. Can government policy changes help overcome the health disparities predicted or perhaps resulting from the poor who have low control over their lives and yet will be entering the government health care system at greater rates in the next few years?

This post is right now concerned with the individual and how that member of society can positively impact their potential future health by making changes in their lives. These changes need to be cost effective and also not barred by social status. They need to be within the reach of the normal American. I believe the studies cited in this post reflect that potential for the normal American to positively impact their lives. These studies and many others show an individual’s health impact positively improving by increasing social connections. This is one reason for someone to join a group!

The empowered volunteer’s mission is to help people understand the benefits of joining their respective group.

In short, the stage is set for the Empowered Volunteer to take charge of their lives and reap the potential impact on their health and mental wellbeing while helping others find their way towards these same benefits. This is truly a win-win situation.

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