FITNESS TRIBUNE No 1 English

Be Balanced

Be Balanced!

The pursuit of happiness

by Manuela Böhme

Everybody is on a quest for happiness - philosophers, psychologists and historians of religion alike have taken up and investigated the sub ject of joy and happiness time and again. Happiness is the goal of all human ambition and action – to us it is the highest good.

Balanced Motion: Experiencing happiness Making people happier is a wonderful task. And everybody has some experi ence of making other people happy. But increasing happiness through movement – is that feasible? Traditional cardiovascular endurance training creates the following positive effects: The availability of the neurotransmit ter’s dopamine, serotonin and noradren aline increases. A lack of these neuro transmitters leads to depression. The concentration of stress hormones such as, e.g. cortisol is clearly reduced and the adrenal gland becomes more stress resistant. This increases self-confidence, emo tional stability, optimism, drive, social openness and the ability to relax. Mental performance improves due to increased oxygen supply. The neural network grows, new blood vessels are formed and brain and mem ory performance improves. Stress hormones are broken down. The ‘creativity hormone’ ACTH forms to an increasing extent. ACTH is capa ble of re-dissolving fat deposits that have formed between brain cells. The immune system is strengthened. The activity of natural killer cells and macrophages increases five-fold.

One encyclopaedia provides the follow ing definition: Happiness is the complex emotion of joy when experiencing the fulfilment of hopes, wishes and expectations, when positive events occur, and when a person experiences a sense of unity between him/herself and that which he/she experiences. Happiness also arises when events or ‘fate’ takes a favourable course, and it describes a state of wellbeing and a feeling of contentment with one‘s life. Scientific investigations confirm that ‘happiness is in the head’ – happiness depends much less on external circum stances than is generally assumed. The actual feeling of happiness is based on a chemical process that takes place in the brain. The chemical building blocks that make up our feeling of happiness and sense of wellbeing consist of certain neurotransmitters. These emotional determinants, which occur naturally in the body, include dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline and endorphins as well as certain hormones. They are released in response to certain stimuli and received by receptors – and hence trigger the feeling of happiness. Their half-life only amounts to approx. 5 minutes and this is why feelings of happiness unfortu nately never last. In healthy humans, the chemical substances responsible for our feelings of elation are broken down fairly

quickly. This is because the primary aim of the brain is to do everything it can to maintain a certain state of ‘normality’ or balance. These short-lived highs are not suf ficient to create a permanent feeling of happiness within us. Research on hap piness does not therefore regard happi ness as a fleeting emotional state but as a permanent condition that dynamically fluctuates between emotional highs and lows and as a permanent mental person ality trait. The more pleasant feelings and joy we experience on a daily level, the more intensive and stable is our experience of happiness. Biochemically oriented research on happiness confirms that the following activities give rise to the experience of happiness:

Activities that demand such a high degree of concentration (absorption) that one forgets about oneself, Activities that affirm one‘s own competence.

Since humans mentally create their experience of reality themselves, hap piness is nothing less than a person’s own creation and decision. The ability to interpret experiences as fortunate or lucky must be cultivated. But in order to do so, one must also know what hap piness feels like.

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Fitness Tribune International 1