June 11th 2025
–
Dr. Will Cole
–
Bloated after eating, no matter what you eat? Here are a few of the most likely imbalances and contributing factors behind post-meal bloating.
The post Bloated After Eating? Here’s What Your Gut Is Trying to Tell You appeared first on Dr. Will Cole.
Read the full article here:
Bloated After Eating? Here’s What Your Gut Is Trying to Tell You
June 11th 2025
–
WellBeing Magazine
–
Discover how gut health affects your skin. Explore the gut skin connection, inflammation, and nutrients for a clear, radiant complexion.
Vibrant, clear skin has long been the holy grail of beauty, but what if the secret wasn’t found in surface-level rituals? For years, the gut’s role in digestion and immunity was its defining narrative but emerging research suggests that what happens in the twists and turns of the digestive tract may ripple outward, influencing everything from breakouts to premature ageing. Scientists refer to this as the gut-skin axis, a complex relationship that may explain that an imbalanced gut microbiome, heightened systemic inflammation and impaired nutrient absorption could all manifest on our most visible organ — our skin.
While the gut-skin connection remains an evolving field, scientists are uncovering intriguing parallels between microbial diversity and complexion clarity. Could the key to a calm, resilient and luminous complexion lie not just in what we apply on top, but in how we nurture our inner ecosystem?
Beneath the surface of our skin lies an intricate biological conversation — one that extends far beyond our skincare routines. More than digestion, the gut plays a far-reaching role in regulating the body’s immune and inflammatory responses — two critical factors in skin health. Researchers exploring the gut-skin axis suggest that imbalances in the gut microbiome may not just disturb internal health but could also influence skin conditions.
“The gut is connected to so many facets of our wellbeing. Around 70-80 per cent of the immune system resides in the gut, and it also plays a role in serotonin production, our feel-good hormone,” explains Jessica Sepel, wellness expert and founder of JSHealth Vitamins. “The microbiome plays a foundational role in our overall health, so it’s no surprise that now we’re seeing compelling research linking gut health to skin health as well.”
Researchers agree that at the centre of this connection is the gut microbiome — a vast network of trillions of bacteria that shape immune responses, influence oxidative stress and regulate inflammation. When this delicate ecosystem is thrown off balance, a phenomenon known as dysbiosis, the effects may be systemic and show up on the surface with increased skin reactivity, breakouts and accelerated ageing.
“Evidence suggests that issues such as acne, psoriasis, dermatitis and eczema could stem from a disrupted gut microbiome, which is the catalyst for immunemodulated inflammation,” says Sepel.
Another key player is intestinal permeability, a condition where the gut lining becomes compromised. The gut lining acts as a protective barrier, preventing harmful substances from entering the bloodstream. But when weakened, it may allow toxins and inflammatory molecules to circulate throughout the body, triggering immune responses that amplify skin inflammation. Some researchers propose that this could contribute to persistent redness, irritation and inflammatory skin conditions.
“This interconnectedness is particularly evident in research examining gut disorders and inflammatory skin conditions,” says Sepel, citing a 2018 study that found that individuals with acne had a less diverse gut microbiome than those without, reinforcing the idea that gut microbial balance influences skin inflammation.
A comprehensive review published in the Journal of Microbiome Research in 2022 highlighted that individuals with atopic dermatitis exhibited a higher prevalence of gut dysbiosis, characterised by an imbalance in gut microbial communities. This imbalance was associated with increased intestinal permeability, commonly referred to as “leaky gut”. Additionally, the review noted that patients with psoriasis often showed reduced levels of beneficial gut bacteria, suggesting another potential link between gut microbial composition and skin health.
If a thriving gut microbiome is the foundation of skin health, the question becomes: how can you work with this connection and cultivate balance within? The next step lies in strengthening gut health through targeted nutrition, lifestyle shifts and scientifically supported interventions, so that the microscopic messengers that are sending the information between your belly and your skin are working for you, not against you.
“Ultimately, we want to go to the gut and address the root cause of skin conditions when they are gut-related, with nutritional protocols, including therapeutic doses of nutrients and minerals, as well as looking at supporting lifestyle factors,” advises Sepel. This allows you to use the gut-skin axis to your advantage, regulating inflammation and enhancing skin resilience from the inside out.
The gut microbiome thrives on a diverse range of beneficial bacteria, and maintaining this balance plays a role in modulating inflammatory skin responses. Probiotics, found in fermented foods and supplements, introduce beneficial microbes that contribute to gut and skin health. Prebiotics serve as fuel for these microbes, fostering a robust internal ecosystem. Think of probiotics as the gut-loving workers and prebiotics
as their packed lunch!
A study found that specific probiotic strains, such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, reduced acne severity and improved skin barrier function. These findings reinforce the understanding that gut microbial diversity plays a role in systemic inflammation, which can manifest in the skin.
Sepel recommends taking a high-quality, multistrain probiotic supplement daily. “Look for one that contains a blend of different science-backed strains, with 35 billion colony-forming units (CFU) of live probiotics per capsule.” When it comes to prebiotics, dietary sources are a delicious way to fuel your inner ecosystem. “Incorporate a variety of prebiotic-rich foods into your diet, such as garlic, onions, asparagus,
bananas and oats,” Sepel suggests. “Just as diversity is key in the foods we eat, it’s also essential for the microbiome — eating a wide range of plant-based foods can help cultivate a diverse and thriving gut environment that supports both digestion and skin health.”
“Inflammation is a key driver of many gut and skin concerns, making an anti-inflammatory approach crucial for maintaining balance within both systems,” says Sepel. A great place to start is by focusing on certain nutrients that have been shown to regulate inflammatory pathways, support gut microbial diversity and protect skin from oxidative stress.
Omega-3 fatty acids, found in fatty fish, flaxseeds and walnuts, have been studied for their role in reducing systemic inflammation, which may benefit inflammatory skin conditions such as acne, rosacea and eczema, as well as preventing “inflammageing” — accelerated ageing of the skin due to inflammation. Polyphenols, present in green tea, berries and dark chocolate, are another helpful focus for microbiome diversity, while offering antioxidant protection against skin-damaging free radicals. Curcumin, the active compound in turmeric, has demonstrated potential in modulating gut bacteria and lowering inflammatory markers, making it a valuable nutrient for gutskin harmony.
Since intestinal permeability has been associated with systemic inflammation, reinforcing the gut lining is a crucial step in maintaining skin health. Functional foods such as bone broth, which is rich in collagen and amino acids like glycine and proline, may help support gut-barrier integrity by nourishing the cells of the intestinal lining. Other key nutrients, including L-glutamine, zinc and collagen peptides, have been
studied for their role in strengthening the gut lining and potentially mitigating inflammatory skin flare-ups.
Sepel also advises being mindful of dietary choices that can contribute to gut inflammation. “Certain foods, alcohol and excessive refined sugar can disrupt gut integrity and trigger inflammation,” she explains. “Being aware of potential irritants and intolerances — such as gluten for some individuals — can make a significant difference in how the gut, and ultimately the skin, responds.”
While nutrition lays the foundation for a thriving gut-skin axis, daily habits shape the environment in which this delicate system functions. The way we manage stress, hydrate and align with natural rhythms can significantly influence microbiome balance and, in turn, skin health.
Stress management is a critical yet often overlooked component of gut and skin health. Psychological stress has been shown to disrupt the gut microbiome, heightening systemic inflammation and contributing to inflammatory skin conditions. Chronic stress may alter microbial composition and impair skin barrier function, making stress regulation essential for long-term skin vitality.
“Managing stress is key” Sepel emphasises, with a lifestyle that prioritises cortisol regulation and nervous system health. “Incorporating daily rituals such as meditation, yoga, walking in nature, learning to say ‘no’ and simply taking a moment to pause can help calm the nervous system and, in turn, support a more balanced gut environment.”
Circadian rhythm alignment plays an equally pivotal role in supporting gut and skin function. The gut microbiome operates on a biological clock, meaning that consistent meal timing, exposure to natural light and quality sleep all contribute to microbiome stability. For Sepel, prioritising an evening wind-down routine is essential for deep sleep, which supports both gut and skin regeneration. “A structured nighttime ritual allows the body to enter a restorative state,” she explains.
“Limiting screen time before bed, sipping on a calming herbal tea, taking a relaxing lavender bath or shower and practising gentle techniques to calm the nervous system — such as putting your legs up the wall and deep belly breathing — can help signal to the body that it’s time to rest, allowing for optimal repair overnight.”
While research into the gut-skin connection continues to evolve, the evidence already suggests that the health of our microbiome plays a significant role in skin integrity, resilience and overall appearance. Scientists are still uncovering the precise mechanisms that link gut health to skin function, yet what is clear is that a well-balanced gut microbiome, reduced systemic inflammation and mindful lifestyle choices all contribute to a happier complexion — and a healthier you.
Taking a holistic approach invites you to harness the potential of this internal ecosystem. While topical skincare will always have its place, true skin health starts far deeper, in the unseen world of the gut. As research in this space continues to grow, embracing the gut-skin axis may be one of the most promising frontiers at the intersection of beauty and health. Here, an invitation lies to mindfully embrace whole-body wellness — one that you feel within and radiates outward.
Article Featured in WellBeing Magazine 216
The post The Gut Skin Connection appeared first on WellBeing Magazine.
Read the full article here:
June 11th 2025
–
WellBeing Magazine
–
Mulch can help — or harm. Learn key lessons on using mulch wisely to avoid common gardening mistakes and protect your plants.
I’ve killed several trees with well-intentioned mulch, like the young grapefruit trees that I surrounded with old carpet, to keep the weeds down and the moisture in. The carpet did both perfectly. Not a single weed came up through it, and not a single drop of rain penetrated the carpet to water the trees either. By the time I realised that the carpet was backed with waterproofing, one tree was dead and the others none too healthy, either.
Even a loose mulch of autumn leaves and lucerne can soak up the small amounts of rain we usually get in droughts. Two to three millimetres in a night once a week can be enough to keep plants alive, but if the trees are mulched, even with the best mulch possible, the mulch will soak up the rain shower long before the water reaches the plant roots.
It took me years in the ‘90s drought to realise that the Tahitian lime trees I’d mulched with decayed wood chips weren’t doing well. They needed extra tucker — wood chips are low in nitrogen and were using up plant tucker as they broke down. The vegie garden mulched with well-broken-down, composted wood chips was even worse. Seedlings just seemed to vanish when I planted them in the compost-rich soil. The “composting” was killing my seedlings to turn them back into soil.
Lesson one in mulching: only mulch if you expect to get regular, thorough soakings from rain or your own watering systems.
Lesson two: Place some mulch on a sheet of cardboard or even the concrete driveway before you put it in the garden. Trickle water on it, then move the mulch away. If the cardboard or cement isn’t wet, then it repels water.
This doesn’t mean you need to throw it away. Just mix it with other mulch material, leaves or old corn stalks, until it’s loose enough for water to get through. Don’t mulch with lawn clippings, unless they have been mixed with autumn leaves, or scattered very thinly indeed.
Lesson three: Most mulch will be low in nitrogen. Mulched plants, veg, fruit trees or ornamentals will need a bit of extra feeding so the mulch breaks down into rich soil, instead of temporarily starving your plants.
Lesson four: Find out where your mulch came from. A disaster happened to a neighbour decades ago. He was offered unwanted hay that he used in his orchard, but it had been sprayed with herbicide that was still active. It killed the entire garden. Many councils are now learning this lesson as they find their garden areas have been filled with a soil and compost mix containing asbestos, impossible to know about without expensive testing and possibly lethal in a few decades to those who have played there as children.
Most of the mulch I use is home-grown. The lovely, rich material from the two compost bins is given to the vegetable gardens, but only when it has broken down so that no part of it is recognisable. Undigested organic matter can spread rot to carrots, parsnips and even deep-rooted ones. If you can still see the eggshells from six months ago, the compost needs more time to truly break down.
The fruit trees, on the other hand, are given trimmings, fallen branches or hunks of dead wattle tree that have fallen across our driveway. If the trees get enough tucker, even a quite large wattle trunk will break down in three years or so. Fast-growing trees usually rot quickly, too. Don’t try this with red gum branches or salvias. We now have several salvia forests under the avocado trees where we piled the “not as dead as I thought” stems in winter. But the unwanted thinning from your grevillea or camellia? Throw them down as mulch.
Even bunches of flowers may have seeds that germinate if thrown into mulch once the blooms have faded. We have dahlias popping up in odd corners. The dahlias are welcome. The Marvel of Peru flowers are not. I was delighted when a friend gave me a vaseful. Sadly, those flowers also developed viable seeds while still in the vase, which germinated in the warmth of the mulch. The local birds love the seeds — another feral in the garden to deal with. I still love mulch, but these days I am far more careful about what I use and where I put it.
Article featured in WellBeing Magazine 216
The post Making a mess with mulch appeared first on WellBeing Magazine.
Read the full article here:
June 11th 2025
–
WellBeing Magazine
–
Discover how OzHarvest food rescue is transforming lives by reducing food waste, feeding vulnerable communities, and fighting hunger across Australia.
“Food is way more than the nutritional value,” says Ronni Kahn AO. “It’s about sharing, it’s about caring and it’s about elevating the spirit and making people feel comfortable and wanted.”
It’s been a long journey for the food-waste activist and social entrepreneur to recognise this. “I was a picky eater,” Kahn says, recalling her childhood mealtimes. “I ate chops and chips… I never ate my vegetables!” Her mother was a skilled cook, but Kahn never appreciated what was on her plate at the time. She smiles from behind her square-rimmed glasses. “It’s something I regretted — a little late — but have made up for it.”
To say that Kahn has made up for it is an understatement. In 2004, she founded OzHarvest, a food rescue charity, rescuing quality food from going to landfill and delivering it to those most in need — a Robin Hood of food wastage. OzHarvest rescues quality surplus food from commercial businesses including supermarkets, airlines, restaurants and hotels and delivers them for free to charitable agencies including homeless shelters, women’s shelters and rehabilitation centres.
Kahn also started the world’s first free supermarket. There are now two OzHarvest Markets — one in Sydney and one in Adelaide. The shelves are stocked with surplus fresh produce and pantry staples rescued from commercial supermarkets and other food businesses, which “shoppers” can access for free.
Through her work, Kahn has also been influential in changing laws. Alongside a team of pro-bono lawyers, she lobbied state governments to amend legislation to allow potential food donors to give their surplus food to charity without fear of liability. They were successful.
At 72 years old, Kahn is also a leading voice in both the national and global dialogue on food waste, and has received endless accolades for her work, including receiving the 2010 Australia’s Local Hero Award and, more recently, the Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2019.
Kahn was born in South Africa in the 1950s and grew up in Johannesburg. While she was too young to understand the full extent of the political landscape in the country at that time, she feels that the injustices she witnessed back then may have laid the foundations for her passion for social activism.
“Being brought up in South Africa during the apartheid era meant that I physically was seeing people who needed food, all day, every day. But I was little, and I didn’t really compute [the magnitude of the issue],” she recalls. While starting a charity wasn’t something that ever crossed her mind at that age, Kahn became increasingly aware of social inequality and privilege.
In her university years, she moved to Israel on a study scholarship and it was here that she got married and had her two sons. She spent a decade living on a kibbutz, a communal settlement where more than 300 people lived, worked and shared food and farmland together. Seeing how much hard work and resources went into creating food was also an eye-opener for Kahn and laid the foundations for her later passion in tackling food wastage.
Seeking a better life, Kahn and her family emigrated to Australia where she started her own business as an event planner in Sydney. It was during these events that the seedling of Kahn’s passion to prevent food waste really started to blossom.
After each event, Kahn was horrified at how much quality food was thrown out. After one particular corporate event, where food for around 1000 people was mostly untouched, she decided to do something about it.
“I had wonderful stalls of beers and kegs of wine, and people just went straight for the drinks and didn’t touch the food. There were thousands of kilos of food, and it just was unconscionable,” says Kahn, recalling that day. “It had never occurred to me before, but on that day, I just said, ‘I am not throwing away this food,’ and that moment fundamentally changed my life.”
Kahn boxed up the food and drove it to the nearest shelter. Still wearing the stilettos that she’d been working in all day, Kahn trotted up to the door, arms aching under boxes overflowing with food and asked if she could hand it over. The shelter gratefully accepted.
But, at that time, it wasn’t so much a desire to solve hunger that motivated her. She simply saw a problem and wanted to fi nd a solution. That moment inspired Kahn to set up OzHarvest, a charitable organisation to help solve the issue of food waste — to rescue discarded quality food from a network of more than 2000 commercial food donors and redirect it to those in need.
Since that day, OzHarvest has delivered more than 280 million meals and prevented around 70,000 tonnes of edible food from being sent to landfill. Not only does this feed people in need, but their eff orts are helping to tackle the harmful impact of food wastage on the environment. According to the UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2021, up to 10 per cent of global greenhouse gases are associated with food that is produced but not consumed.
And for the charities and shelters that receive deliveries from OzHarvest, the impact goes beyond just putting nourishing foods into hungry bellies.
Funds that would have been allocated to ever-increasing food bills can now be redirected to community programs focusing on things such as education or rehabilitation. “Some [shelters] have told us that we’ve saved them around $100,000 a year, which means they can use that for other programs,” says Kahn.
Today, OzHarvest employs almost 400 staff and has around 3500 volunteers, in Australia alone. The business model has been replicated overseas in New Zealand, the UK, South Africa, Vietnam and Japan.
It was an incident with a salmon that sparked Kahn’s realisation that there was a knowledge gap in food education, and this was playing a big role in wastage. This was particularly true for people who had only been exposed to a limited selection of foods, or only processed and pre-packaged food from the supermarket like frozen fish fingers and chicken nuggets.
When the team on cooking show MasterChef had a whole salmon leftover, they called and asked if OzHarvest wanted to rescue it. Knowing good-quality protein was hard to come by, Kahn’s team gratefully collected it and took it to one of their charity agencies, where a chef cooked and served it. But a couple of days later, Kahn got a call to say that some people had refused to eat the salmon, thinking it was off simply because it was pink.
“They’d never seen a pink fish!” says Kahn. “A lot of charities, all they could afford before us, often, was white bread, jam, bangers and mash, and then we started bringing olive bread, wholewheat bread, artisanal breads.” Being exposed to and educated about different types of food was important to change attitudes and behaviours. “It’s about a whole shift and change in the mindset of people who’ve never eaten a broad spectrum of food.”
This opened up Kahn’s mind to not just feeding people but giving them the knowledge and skills to feed themselves. “We’d started feeding people, and I knew that this was making a huge difference, but I kept thinking, ‘How are we going to shift and change our society to value food more, to think about quality in food, to think about the value of food, because we’ve lost the value of food?” says Kahn.
OzHarvest now runs numerous education programs for children and vulnerable people. One such program is Food Education and Sustainability Training (FEAST), a free 10-week education program for primary and high school students. FEAST, which has been run in more than 1000 schools, teaches simple cooking skills to school students and educates them on the impacts of food waste and how to make positive food choices.
“When we started that program, there were times when people didn’t know where a potato came from,” says Kahn. “They thought it came from a bag on a shelf in a supermarket. It’s all about how food is grown and what it takes to grow food.”
While rescuing food and increasing food literacy is important, Kahn says that the heart of what they do at OzHarvest is really about community, confidence and building a sense of self-worth.
In the OzHarvest Markets, Kahn and her team aim to restore dignity to those who can’t afford to shop in a traditional supermarket. This number isn’t small – according to the 2024 Foodbank Hunger Report, 3.4 million households in Australia ran out of food in the last year.
Each week, around 2400 people use the Sydney service, a number that has been increasing with the rising cost of living. When a man came into the OzHarvest Market, volunteers noticed that he had an injury, a large gash that had been left to fester. When they gently questioned this, he said he refused to go to a doctor.
Through the strong community that OzHarvest had built, they found a doctor within the community, offering a less-intimidating pathway for him to be examined. The doctor checked his injury and insisted he needed immediate medical care.
“We got him rushed to hospital and he came back five weeks later,” recalls Kahn. “Just this week, he came back and said, ‘You saved my life, because if I hadn’t come and if you hadn’t cared for me, the doctors told me that I wouldn’t have survived the septicaemia and the poison.”
On another occasion, Kahn was in a coffee shop in Sydney when the waiter, a young man with an accent, sat down across from her. Kahn relayed the story on the Mamamia’s No Filter podcast, “His eyes filled and his mouth smiled and he said, ‘You’re Ronni, aren’t you? You’re OzHarvest’… I’m an international student.
During COVID, I lost my job, no university, couldn’t get back to my home, the [Australian] Government didn’t give us any support. But you fed me, so I wanted to say thank you.”
Among the many jangling pieces of jewellery that adorn Kahn, most notably the layers of brightly coloured beaded necklaces, she finds and holds up a teaspoon hanging on a chain around her neck. But this silverware-themed jewellery is not for making a brew on the go, it’s symbolic.
Based on a quote by the late Israeli writer Amos Oz, The Order of the Teaspoon is a mantra that Kahn lives by. Oz explained that in moments of conflagration, Doer & Thinker • Ronni Kahn AO 43 a disastrous fi re, we as humans have three ways we can behave. Kahn recites, “Number one, we can look at that fi re and run away as fast as we can and leave those that cannot run to burn. Number two, we can write an angry letter to the newspaper demanding that the perpetrators get punished. Number three, we can run and fi nd a bucket. If we cannot find a bucket, find a jug, and if we cannot fi nd a jug, fi nd a teaspoon. And I know that a teaspoon is tiny, and that fi re is huge, but there are millions of us, and if we all use our teaspoon, we can put out that fi re. The teaspoon is a symbol of random acts of kindness and goodness.” Kahn smiles as she runs the spoon between her fingers. “I invite everybody to join the order of the teaspoon.”
Your “teaspoon” could be simply becoming more mindful of not wasting food at home. In 2022, OzHarvest launched their Use it Up campaign, encouraging households to segregate a shelf of the pantry or fridge to food that needs to be used up first. Research on the impact of the study, done in collaboration with Monash University, found that households participating in the campaign had lowered their household food waste by up to 40 per cent.
Though OzHarvest keeps her busy, when Kahn is not working, she loves to swim in the ocean, do Pilates and cook — and, yes, she now eats her vegetables! But spending time with her grandchildren is a favourite way to pass the time, and Kahn’s work has been an inspiration to them and their generation. “My grandson, who turned eight, asked me to come and tell the [teaspoon] story in his class,” she says. “He collected 20 teaspoons and wrote the story out for each of them and gave all of those kids a teaspoon.” When Kahn saw the teacher and parents again, they told her how committed and enthusiastic the children were about using their “teaspoon” to do good in the world.
While Kahn is now in her 70s, she doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. “Personally, my new goal for the next 10, 20 or 30 years is to end hunger,” she says. “We’ve got 10 million Australians who need food. It’s insane. It’s unconscionable.”
But like her dream of starting OzHarvest, Kahn knows that she can’t achieve her goal alone and plans to collaborate with experts from around the world to tackle the issue. “What I’m going to do is pull together and get the right contributors, from government to universities to researchers to the corporate world.
We are going to have to rethink and redesign our thinking around [the idea that] we created hunger. How are we going to un-do the issue of hunger? So that is the focus for me.”
And while world hunger is a huge problem to take on, Kahn thinks that many of us can help change the world in a small way, simply by doing what she did on that first visit to a homeless shelter back in 2004 — identifying a problem and finding a solution.
“Every single day in our lives, we see problems in the things that are around us, whether it’s lighting in streets, whether it’s refuge or refuse or whether it’s treating people better,” says Kahn. “When we see a problem, we don’t always have to say, ‘Why doesn’t somebody fi x this?’ The ‘somebody’ could be you.”
Article featured in WellBeing Magazine 216
The post Waste not, feed many appeared first on WellBeing Magazine.
Read the full article here:
June 11th 2025
–
WellBeing Magazine
–
Happiness is a goal we all strive towards, but have you stopped to think about exactly what “happiness” is to you? Is it being in love? Is it buying a new car? Is it living in your dream town? Or is it engaging in your favourite hobby? Let’s dig a little deeper beyond the top-of-mind imagery to discover the true meaning of happiness.
Happiness: that thing we all want. You want it. Yet what is it? The easiest thing to begin with is to dispense with some of the popular misconceptions. For a start, happiness is not shopping. Despite everything that advertising tries to make you believe, you will not “become” happy by purchasing something. In fact, the evidence is that advertising is a major cause of unhappiness because it seeks to make people feel a sense of lack in their life. Of course, advertising agencies only have that power if you put any credence at all in any of their spruiking. Sling away slogans (there’s one for your T-shirt) and you won’t be open to the depredations that advertising can wreak in your psyche.
If you ask a politician, they will tell you that happiness for individuals lies in economic growth, a perpetually burgeoning gross domestic product (GDP). For mainstream politicians of all sides, the accepted mantra is to deliver the best possible quality of life for us all by concentrating on a growing economy. Growth, growth and growth are the underpinnings of all government planning. There is plenty of evidence to confirm that economic growth and wealth do not equate to happiness. That leaves us with the question of what happiness is, and many researchers and philosophers have tried to come up with an answer. What they’ve often been seeking is the true meaning of happiness beyond material indicators and temporary highs.
Marci Shimoff is the author of Happy for No Reason, a book that resulted from her interviews with scores of scientists and 100 people that she identified as “unconditionally happy”. As a result of all her research, Shimoff concluded that there is a continuum of happiness. At one end are people who are “unhappy”, then there are those who are “happy for a bad reason”, those who are “happy for a good reason” and those who are “happy for no reason”.
According to Shimoff , there are distinct characteristics for each of these points along the happiness spectrum. She says of the “unhappy” segment, “life seems flat. Some of the signs are anxiety, fatigue, feeling blue or low”. Then there are the people who are happy for a bad reason. These people “often try to make themselves feel better by indulging in addictions or behaviours that may feel good in the present but are ultimately detrimental… This kind of happiness is hardly happiness at all. It is only a temporary way to numb or escape our unhappiness through fleeting experiences of pleasure”.
A little further along the spectrum lie those who are happy for a good reason, and Shimoff says that these are the people that we usually identify as happy. These are people experiencing the pleasure of “…having good relationships with our family and friends, a nice house or car or using our talents or our strengths well.” While Shimoff says there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this kind of happiness, “Relying solely on this type of happiness is where a lot of our fear is stemming from these days. We’re afraid the things we need to be happy may be slipping from our grasp.” Her work challenges us to rethink what we chase and to consider the true meaning of happiness from a deeper psychological and spiritual lens.
That is why Shimoff advocates being happy for no reason at all as the most genuine form of happiness. She is not the first to advocate this as it is a principle found in many religious teachings.
The Roman poet Horace observed, “You can change a man’s skies, but you can’t change his soul.” If you don’t have the inner environment to be happy, changing your external environment won’t make you happy, either.
It is also devastatingly disempowering to believe that your happiness lies in your circumstances. Many times in life, it will be beyond your ability to change the world around you. Yet you always have the capacity, although it can be difficult at times, to change your internal way of being. This shift is central to discovering the true meaning of happiness, which lies in cultivating peace within rather than seeking control over the outside world.
Matthieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk and author of Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill. Ricard says, “Happiness is not limited to a few agreeable sensations, intense pleasure or a burst of joy. Rather, it is a way of being and of experiencing the world; a profound fulfilment that suffuses every instant of life and endures despite the inevitable daily hazards we encounter.”
According to Ricard, “Genuine happiness is being in a deep sense of fulfilment that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind; a way of being that pervades all emotional states and gives us the inner resources to deal with whatever comes our way.”
If you want to cultivate happiness within, then it becomes important to identify the inner conditions that lead to genuine happiness as well as identifying those that destroy it. Ricard says, “We must cultivate the states of mind that favour authentic happiness and eliminate the afflictive thoughts and emotions that undermine it. This requires determination and perseverance… If happiness is the ‘goal of goals’, we therefore need to identify and cultivate the inner conditions for genuine wellbeing — altruism, compassion, inner strength, freedom and peace. Simultaneously, we need to gradually phase out from our mind the mental toxins, hatred, craving, mental confusion, arrogance and envy, which destroy our own happiness and that of others.”
Happiness then is not a transient state, no butterfly of emotion briefly inhabiting a sunny field of flowers. There is a fundamental quality of mind that is always present in instances of true happiness. That is why meditation is so closely linked with ideas of happiness. By no means is meditation your only path to happiness, but the objective of meditation is certainly consistent with happiness. Happiness requires familiarity with your mind and how it works. Out of that familiarity and knowledge of yourself can arise an inner state that corresponds with what we describe as happiness. That familiarity can be achieved in many ways, but meditation is an ancient, and scientifically proven, method.
Ricard observes, “The Tibetan word gom, which is usually translated as ‘meditation’, more precisely denotes ‘familiarisation’, while the Sanskrit word bhavana, also translated as ‘meditation’ means ‘cultivation’. Meditation is not about sitting quietly in the shade of a tree and relaxing in a moment of respite from the daily grind; it is about familiarising yourself with a new vision of things, a new way to manage your thoughts, of perceiving people and experiencing the world.”
Happiness is not an event that might happen to you, or a thing you acquire. Happiness is a state of being waiting for you to create it. Go for it.
Article featured in WellBeing Magazine 216
The post Happiness found appeared first on WellBeing Magazine.
Read the full article here:
