 Hi, this is Tracy Tagalma Espinosa, and this is a video on the mind-body connection. We want to begin with this basic idea that whatever you do to your body affects your mind's ability to learn, but your mind, your brain is actually what decides or chooses what to do to the body, so there's this mutually impacting relationship that they have. What we want to do today is to generally introduce this big idea of the mind-body connection by talking about the concept of well-being or quality of life. What does this mean to have this balance, right? And to share this very key concept of human variability, as well as look at how risk and protective factors are involved in everything that we do in our daily life. Anything that we do to our body, anything that we do to our mind affects our global well-being and our ability to perform. I'm going to briefly give you an overview of sleep-physical activity and nutrition, which we'll go into more depth in another video, and hope that throughout we're emphasizing this big idea that your mental processes affect your physical states and your physical body influences how you feel and think, and all of this is a very big iterative process, okay? So let's begin. Number one, personal motto of my own, health, family, work, in that order. And why would I say that? I say that because if you don't have your health, you really don't have anything, and that's kind of cliche, but it's pretty much the truth. If you're feeling lousy, it's very hard to take care of others, take care of anybody else, and you basically can't do well at work because there is a hierarchy to what the body needs before you can get to the mind. And all of this discussion came about in the 17th century with René Descartes, who was a philosopher, who was an educator, but he really brought this idea of the mind and body to the forefront when he said, cognito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. So this idea that the only reason I exist is actually to be able to share my thoughts with the world, which is kind of interesting, right? So the body is there basically to house the brain. So Descartes very much appreciated this idea of the body has to be sane and be in good shape for the mind to be able to perform its tasks. So now many of you are probably saying, okay, so are the brain and the mind the same thing? Well, obviously the brain is a physical thing and the mind, in general, it's an intangible. The link then, though, is connecting the body to the brain and then the behavior, the choices that we have, and the way that our mind decides to use our bodies. So we've looked at this comparative idea of what is well-being? What is quality of life? Which countries have the highest quality of life index? Really interesting, right? So we've gone from this basic survival idea to trying to add in all of the different indicators and sort of get to this big idea, how can we measure whether or not a person has quality of life or what does well-being really mean? And these days, if I were to throw out the concept, you know, what is well-being? Do you feel well? What is mental and physical well-being? Well, some people think about their bodies in the context of also their environment. Some people look at this whole balance of things, you know, is my physical body okay? Is my environment all right? But then they go to other ideas, you know, is my head, is it screwed on the straight? Is my mind working okay? Are the relationships I'm in doing well? Then can I have, have I accomplished things in my life? Others say pretty much the same thing, but, you know, in broader terms, how am I in terms of physical well-being, social well-being, environmental well-being, economic well-being, psychological well-being? If all of those come into play, then yes, I am well. Thank you. But now we've got to this point where people are so big on well-being that there are self-questions and there's apps and there's things to help remind you to have, to be in a good state of well-being. And you can do these things by asking yourself very simply, you know, do I have focus time? Do I have play time? Do I have connecting time with others? Do I have physical time to take care of myself and my body? Do I have time in and do I have downtime? Do I have enough sleep time? So these are other ways that people have created to remind ourselves about the importance of general well-being in order to have maximum performance. So some of the very interesting highlights of the Gallup's top 10 US well-being discoveries and this was back in 2013 were really kind of interesting. They found that the mind is definitely inextricably linked to the body. We know that if obesity is high, then there is a lack of a lower state of well-being. If work situations are stressful, that is correlated with lower well-being. They also looked at other indicators based on demographics, gender, employment, external events to measure and to say basically, who is doing well? And I just throw this out there to show you there's many ways, many indicators, many ways people interpret this concept of well-being. And I'd just like you to reflect on this for a little bit. I mean, does having financial security or being able to learn or have social groups and engagement or to enjoy my leisure time, security, does all of this actually begin with health? So without good health, could you possibly have any of these other elements? So think about that. And this is Harkins back to a super old 1956 idea from Abraham Maslow's work, where he basically laid out this idea of motivation of an individual. If you do not have your physiological needs met, if you are not physically well, healthy, you have a roof over your head and a food to eat, then you can't move up to then being at the stage of safety and belonging to a group, or then feeling good about yourself, self-esteem, or actually being self-actualized. All of those things depend on these basic physiological needs being met first. So I want to leave you with this very big idea that it's so hard to measure well-being or quality of life because everything really depends on what you value. Depending on what you value, we have different types of indicators we can measure and based on those indicators, then we can say, oh yes, this country has a high quality of life or this other country does not, depending on where we put the values. So are we measuring the level of health of people or how many days they get to go on vacation or are we measuring how old people are cared for in a society? Depending on how we measure quality of life, which is huge and varied, then we can say, yes, this particular society, for example, has a high quality of life or me as an individual, I have high quality of life. And let's be careful with some of the terms because they do tend to be used pretty much together, well-being, quality of life. Quality of life is generally looking at the state of a state or a nation or a country. Well-being is actually looking at the individual's mental and physical well-being. So quality of life might measure something like the most livable city or standards of living or how many kids are in each family, right? So the big idea is to understand the unit of analysis. Are we looking at countries as a whole or are we looking at individual measures? And these days, you can find a number of apps and suggestions and blogs about how to improve the quality of your life. But again, it all has to do with what you value. And depending on the things that you value, then you can measure and say, yes, I have a high quality of life or not. Final concept is that even if we could list out all of the different indicators of what is high quality of life, we have to take into consideration human variability, because different people need different things at different points of their lives. So what is quality of life at one stage of life might not be the same in another stage of life or what it might be for one person in one country might not be the same thing for somebody in another country. This means that there is no one size fits all. So when we talk in the next videos about physical exercise or nutrition or sleep, there is nothing that is universal to all human beings. We have to look at the individual rather than trying to be prescriptive for a group. And this basically has to do with your unique combination of characteristics. You are your genes plus your environment and your lifestyle. And all of that mixes together and some of those genes are potentiated and therefore that is who you become in your phenotype. You're unique based on that combination of both your nature and your nurture. Last big idea here about the mind-body connection is that there are risk and protective factors that exist in all of our lives. So risk factors are things that can get in the way of maximum performance or achievement in our life, whereas protective factors are things that actually help us move along towards those goals. And risk and protector factors have the same roots and they can be biological, financial, emotional, they can relate to other people. So the key idea is to understand that they can have the same roots, right? Your family, for example, could be a risk factor for you and a protective factor for me or your environment where you live in or the laws of the land. They could be risk or protective factors depending on the individual, your genetic makeup on an individual level can be a risk or protective factor, right? So the same roots can give birth to either protective factors or to risk factors. So I look forward to considering, you know, some of the risk and protective factors that exist in your own life related to this mind-body connection will specifically focus on sleep, physical activity and nutrition. So give that a think before we meet up. Looking forward to seeing you.