Tension Tamers: How To Feel Better Right Now

Below are some stress management techniques proven to effectively help you regain your peaceful state. Experiment, and find a few favorite relaxation tools to use next time you’re feeling overly stressed.
Autogenic Training (2) Meditation (8) Breathing Exercises (4) Pets (2) Fun and Games (15) PMR (3) General Techniques (16) Positive Affirmations (5) Guided Imagery (3) Self-Hypnosis (2) Humor and Stress Relief (3) Sex (2) Journaling (4) Yoga (4)
6 Ways that Cleaning Can Alleviate StressWhen you think about stress relief, cleaning may not be the first technique that comes to mind. However, the act of cleaning brings several avenues for stress relief. Read about the stress relief benefits of cleaning, and get inspired!

Mindfulness: The Health and Stress Relief BenefitsMindfulness carries powerful benefits for health and stress relief. Learn more about the practice of mindfulness and current mindfulness research, and find resources to bring mindfulness to your daily life.
Mindfulness Exercises - Everyday Mindfulness Exercises For Stress Relief Mindfulness is an amazing tool for stress management and overall wellness because it can be used at virtually any time and can quickly bring lasting results. The following mindfulness exercises are simple and convenient, and can lead you to a deeper experience of mindfulness in your daily life.
Feel Less Frustrated When StressedOften when people are stressed they feel more frustrated and emotionally reactive to events that would normally affect them less. In fact, increased frustration, irritability and sensitivity can be signs of burnout as well. If you find yourself feeling less patient, more frustrated, and less able to handle the stresses of your life, here are five important steps that can help you regain your sense of serenity--even when stressed.
Stress Reliever List: 25 More Stress Relievers to TryStress is almost a universal experience these days. Here are 25 sound ideas on how to relieve that stress. Try several and find the stress reliever or new stress relief practice that helps you maintain a more calm, balanced, low stress life.
Fun Stress RelieversThere are many great stress relievers available, but some of the easiest to actually stick with are the fun ones! Here's a list of fun stress relievers that can distract you out of your stressed frame of mind, and provide additional benefits. Try these fun stress relievers and see which ones can help you acheive a more relaxed, peaceful frame of mind.
What are some ways I can calm down quickly when I'm feeling overwhelmed?Sometimes builds up and we suddenly feel overwhelmed. Other times a series of stressful events occur to overwhelm us. However it happens, when overwhelmed, it's important to have some quick stress relievers to help us feel calm right away. Here are some quick and easy ways to calm down quickly when you're suddenly feeling overwhelmed.
Introspective Stress Relievers That Address The Cause of StressThere are many great stress relievers out there, but perhaps the most useful ways to relieve stress are the ones that help you explore the cause of stress that you're feeling so you can work through your feelings and perhaps prevent future stress. Here's a list of great introspective ways to relieve stress and explore the cause of stress at the same time.
25 More of the Top Stress RelieversMany of us would like to take on new stress relievers, but can't find the right one, or don't have enough ideas on what to try. This list of 25 top stress relievers, complete with information and related resources on each, provides you with plenty of ideas on what to try. Combined with my previous list of 25 stress relievers, you ahve a combined total of 50 great stress relievers, which gives you a great selection for new favorite stress relievers.
Music Relaxation: A Healthy and Conveneint Stress Management ToolMusic has a profound effect of people, both emotionally and physically. Because of this, music can be a powerful tool for relaxation and stress relief. Learn about music relaxation: how and why music affects the body and can be used as an effective stress reliever and stress management tool, and find resources on using music for relaxation and stress management for increased health.
Music and Your Body: How Music Affects Us and Why Music Therapy Promotes HealthMusic therapy is a popular and growing field for good reason: music can reduce stress, aid health, and carry many health benefits, and music therapists can harness the power of music to help their clients relieve pain, reduce stress and anxiety, and see many other benefits. Learn about the effects of music on the body and learn why music therapy is becoming a respected tool in the health care industry.
Top Tension Reducing ActivitiesThese tension reducing stress management techniques have been proven effective in helping people reduce stress, relax, and maintain a healthier lifestyle. Learn about meditation, yoga, self-hypnosis and other important stress management exercises, and feel more relaxed right away!
Stress Relievers: 25 Ways to Reduce StressHere's a growing list of ways you can reduce stress in your life and relieve stress and tension in your mind and body right now! Each stress reliever on the list has links to resources to help you get started so you can feel less stress in your life fast.
Stress Relief Strategies: Top 10 Stress Relief Strategies You Tried as a ChildChildren have natural ways of relieving stress, from day-dreaming to playing games to getting hugs from Mom. Here are 10 stress relief strategies for adults that were adapted from childhood stress relievers. Try one or several of these strategies for stress relief in your daily life; they'll probably come back to you more easily than you think!
Creative Stress Management Activities and Multi-Tasking Stress Stress RelieversYou may know about popular stress management techniques. But did you know that there are some unconventional, productive and creative stress relievers you can work into your day? You may not think of them formally as stress management techniques, but these stress relievers can help you feel more relaxed and enjoy life more, and get other things done, too.[
The Stress Management Word Game: Relieve Stress and Learn!Playing games is a great way to relieve stress by distracting yourself and lightening your mood. This game has the added benefit of teaching you about other stress management techniques as well! You play it like the classic game "Hangman", except each word is a different stress reliever. When you complete a word, you can search the site for more information on each technique!
Road Rage and Stress Management: How to Manage and Prevent Road Rage to Stay Healthier and SaferRoad rage has become an increasingly common problem that threatens the safety of all drivers. Here are some ways to handle driving frustrations in yourself and others, including stress management techniques, coping skills and other strategies for quelling road rage before it takes a toll on your health or physical safety.
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Effect of Face Blindness on Emotions

Face Blindness Affects Emotions
It is common for face blind people to say their emotional life is different than that of most people. For some this difference is slight, but others have gone so far as to say they felt they were more "emotion blind" than face blind, and that their emotion blindness affected their life more than their face blindness.
To help in understanding why this occurs, we'll first look at how emotions work in most people, and then we'll consider how it may be different in face blind people.
A Look at Emotions
Emotions are how we feel - things like happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. We have feelings ourselves, and so do other people. We communicate those feelings to others. And some of our greatest joys come from feeling the emotions of others.
It is possible to have a neurological deficiency that prevents one from having normal emotions. Since the presence of one neurological problem such as face blindness sometimes indicates others are present, too, a face blind person having difficulties with emotions must not rule such a deficiency out. However, many face blind people do not have such, and thus, it is beyond the scope of this discussion to delve into details about that. I would feel remiss to not mention having such a deficiency as a possibility, though, that one with face blindness must consider.
A person with normal emotional capabilities can still have difficulties if he is unable to receive and send emotional information during his encounters with people. As we shall see, face blindness can interfere with one's reception of emotional information. And, much as a deaf man with an intact speech mechanism can't speak because he doesn't know what his words are supposed to sound like, a person who doesn't receive emotional information from others may not know how to send his emotional information to them. Since reception of emotions is at the root of the problems with emotions that the face blind person might have, let us look first at how most people, people without face blindness or any other impairment, receive emotional material from others.
How We Receive Emotion Information from Other People
When someone communicates how he feels, most of the time he will choose to do so with facial expressions or by tone of voice. Research has shown that when people can both see and hear each other, they will rely on facial expressions and tone of voice to communicate over ninety percent of their emotions. Less than ten percent of the time do they communicate their feelings by using words.
Knowing people's emotions is important for survival, just as knowing who people are, is important. Since the dawn of mankind down to this very day, if a man miscalculates someone's emotions, that can get him killed, so it is important to know the emotions of a nearby person immediately.
It is no wonder, then, that most people get another person's emotions from the face, which is the same spot they are looking at to ascertain identity. How convenient, that we can save time by getting both of these vital pieces of information by looking at precisely the same place! Well, let's not seriously believe this happened by chance. It is so important that we get both pieces of information quickly that mankind probably evolved that way.
People also get quite a bit of emotional information from the tone of voice. The sound of the voice is also used to ascertain someone's identity, particularly when the other person cannot be seen, such as when it is night, when he is not in view, or, in modern times, when he is on the telephone. Once again, we have a situation where the other person's emotion is being extracted from the same source as is his identity.
Change, or motion is an important ingredient in pulling emotion data out of the identity data. The cracking of a smile means that smiling is the emotion right then! A frozen smile, on the other hand, is not as significant, and can only be used to infer that a smile belongs somewhere in the recent past of the event unfolding.
So what we have are two sources of identifying someone - the visual image of their face and the sound of their voice, plus two sources of identifying their emotions - the change in, or motion of, the visual image of their face and the change in, or fluctuation of, the sound of their voice.
What all this means, of course, that the brain is primed to extract someone's emotions from the same place that we extract their identity, and in particular, the motion or change of those inputs is particularly sought out for emotional evaluation.
When we think of emotions that come from others, we think of our efforts to read their mental state. There is, though, one emotion that people cause you to feel merely by their presence. Because there is no word in English to describe it, I will call this emotion "I'm-here." (We do have a word for the absence of adequate doses of this emotion - "loneliness," but surprisingly, no word for the continuous stream of feelings one receives from another that forestalls it.) Like most of the emotions we receive from others, the I'm-here emotion comes directly from the neurological circuits that determine who a person is.
Emotions result from the action of a subconscious part of the brain upon what we sense around us. To feel genuine they have to feel spontaneous, automatic. This feeling arises because, as a matter created in the subconscious, they feel like they sprang forth spontaneously. What this means is that we must "follow our hearts" and pursue emotional satisfaction, even if our means of getting it is a bit unusual, because we really have no choice in the matter. The subconscious does what it wants.
Of course, we all apply conscious thought to our interpretation of others' emotions. If someone's facial and tone-of-voice information says one thing, but their words and deeds say another, we will take that into account. But to do that takes conscious thought, and it takes time. By the time we fashion our response, it may not fit into social discourse gracefully. The timing may be off, and our response may be just too late. Thinking about emotions really bogs us down. We do so much better when we take them immediately off the identity circuits without thought.
To summarize, each person's mind has established a way it recognizes people. For most people, that would be the image of the face, though they use the sound of the voice, too. Anytime a person is encountered, the mind makes it top priority to get that information about him at once and use it to determine both his identity and his emotional state. This happens very fast. A few seconds later, the mind gets around to processing other information that might also bear on the interpretation of emotional communications. At this time it may not be too late to use that information for all purposes, but it is too late to be socially graceful about doing it.
All this works great, of course, if your way of identifying people is the face, because that is where people put most of their emotional outgoing messages. If your way of identifying people is not the face, you can imagine that this might cause problems in these three areas:
Perceiving emotions
Sending emotions
Enjoying emotions
Perceiving Emotions
Face blind people have learned to recognize people by using things other than the face. Since emotions are extracted along with recognition data, the face blind person will be subconsciously looking for emotions in a place where none are being sent. Interestingly, he may get some emotional feelings from there, but they are feelings he long ago learned to discount, because he has learned they are not related to what other people are intending to send. Nevertheless, such emotions are hard for him to ignore, and he can't ignore them completely, because they are the only source of his feeling he is celebrating human life.
To some extent a face blind person may have learned to seek emotions in the face, but he will not be as skilled at reading facial expressions as other people are. What little he does read from the face will come not automatically but as a result of conscious thought, because for the face blind person, facial emotions do not come from the place that he uses to recognize people. The slowness of such emotions to be processed can put the face blind person socially "out of synch."
The face blind person will have to rely on words a lot more than most people to figure out emotions. Since most people put less than ten percent of their emotions into words, this means that the face blind person will not only be slow to perceive emotions, but he will miss many altogether.
Close to half of emotions transmitted by most people are sent using the face, and about a third more are transmitted using the tone of their voice. Some face blind people have "central auditory processing disorder," a neurologically based form of hearing distortion. (I am one of those people.) With this condition we find it hard to extract emotions from the tone of someone's voice. For us, we miss even more emotions, and we count even more heavily on the words said.
Relying on words alone can cause misunderstandings. Some people become very accustomed to the fact that just about everyone does receive their emotions, and they will say one thing and in effect cancel it out or even hint they mean the opposite by accompanying their words with a emotion fashioned to do that. The face blind person may not pick up the emotions and will thus take this person at his words. When those words are later discovered to be untrue, the face blind person will justifiably consider the other person to have been undependable at best, or lying or vindictive at worst.
Of course, it is possible for people to send all of their emotions via their words alone. We do it when we are writing, all the time. But when someone can see or hear us, they choose to use the personal recognition channels rather than words because for them emotions can be sent that way with much less effort. And face blind people can miss out. Incidentally, one place that face blind people have found they fit very well is on the Internet. All identity and emotion information there is conveyed by words, a medium with which face blind people are not impaired.
At a very young age a person born with face blindness will learn that the emotions he feels automatically (from his identity-determination circuits) do not correspond with what people actually feel. He will learn to discount those emotions. They still come in, though, and they may affect his moods subconsciously, making him enjoy some encounters and not enjoy others, without knowing why. More than that, once in a while one of those emotions may come barreling through into the conscious mind.
If a person senses an emotion being sent to him, a very human thing to do is return it. If someone smiles at me, for example, I will smile back, though it may take me longer to do that than it would most people, because a smile comes from the face, and I am slow at interpreting facial emotions. This all happens because it is part of natural human communications to echo perceived emotions back to the sender. In reality, it's our way of saying, "I got your emotion message."
Interestingly, the images that I use to identify people (hair and jeans) sometimes will trigger an emotional response in me. When this happens the mechanism leading up to it is subconscious and very fast. I will unexpectedly find myself echoing an emotion that I know in reality the person never sent. Smiles are the most common emotions for me to receive in that way, but occasionally I get others. About once a month I'll get a hearty laugh, and of course in a knee-jerk fashion I return it. If someone asks about it (which seldom happens), I just say, "Oh, sorry, for a moment my mind was somewhere else."
Emotions taken from non-face areas may not be completely uncorrelated to those held by the person seen. One learns over time to relate emotions to body language. Such emotions can also be self-fulfilling prophesies to some extent - if I sense from the movement of a man's jeans and thus his gait that he is happy, I will smile at him and he will echo that back and may feel happy.
Although most emotions I get from my recognition circuits do not correspond to what people are sending, one emotion that comes from that source is very valid - the I'm-here emotion. Since that emotion comes from my recognition circuits - the place that emotions are "supposed" to come from - its flow is more swift, strong, effortless, and frequent than any other emotion. Only by looking at that one emotion can I imagine how much the feeling of other emotions affects the lives of other people.
Except for the I'm-here emotions and the occasional ones I just described, no emotions are received quickly, effortlessly, and instantly by me. This is no doubt because they don't come in from my recognition circuits. The result of this is that I must consciously think about emotions, and they come very slowly, and often out of synch with the social scene to which they belong.
Emotions may not be attenuated uniformly across the board by a face blind person. I get happy emotions better than unhappy ones, for example, and I get emotions off of hairy male faces better than off of others. Friends may not need to tell me they are happy, but if they are unhappy with me, they might have to. Women may have to tell me how they feel while I may pick this up myself from men.
Some face blind people will find difficulty in reading gestures, in addition to their difficulties in reading identity and emotions. I have, for example, found it impossible to read sign language, which involves a lot of facial expression. I abandoned efforts at learning sign language after taking the beginning class for the third time. I had taken the courses because with my distorted hearing I had hoped knowing it would help me find people I could connect with. But understanding sign language for me was not to be. I don't know if my trouble with sign language was related to my face blindness or not, but faces as well as hands do communicate the gestures. I doubt my sign language trouble was related to my distorted hearing since lots of people with my kind of hearing impairment use sign language.
I do know that my sign language problem was not related to a general problem with language. One can disprove any allegation of a general language disability by finding an unmuddled channel and using it to access the intellect. Like many face blind people, I can communicate by reading and writing just fine. That I have two college degrees is to me evidence enough of that. Of course, I completely got through college by reading. The only class I ever got a "D" in was one that had no textbook. My other grades were all better than that.
Sending Emotions
Though a person may have normal facilities for receiving, processing, and sending emotional data, if he does not see a rich variety of emotions on the channels he is able to receive, his ability to send emotions will be affected.
I have had the occasion to meet several totally blind people. All of them were very poker faced. Not seeing what emotions are supposed to look like when coming in, they never acquired a large repertoire of emotions to send out. Well, I've been told that my face is not as animated as most people's faces are. I suspect this is not because I physically can't make the expressions, but rather because I don't see them in others and thus don't know how to make them.
Time after time throughout my life, I have felt that people were not "taking me seriously." Now that I am aware of my distorted hearing and my face blindness, I now realize this was taking place because I have often not accompanied my words with corroborating expressions on my face or in my tone of voice. Without that corroboration, people who are accustomed to receiving emotional information to back up someone's words, react by not believing mine. People who do this will not react by saying they think you are lying. If they just would, I could easily confront that. What they will do instead is completely ignore you. Life can be very frustrating when time after time you are ignored. If one accepts that as the norm, he can in time become very isolated from others. It is probably more mentally healthy to resolve to "do something about it" instead, but sadly, there is often not much that can be done, and the frustration just grows.
Beyond facial, gestural, and tone of voice emotions there lies another level of emotional expression - violence. When people's emotions fail to communicate what they want, there is an urge to react, not by using words because they've already been used and they didn't work, but instead by escalating their emotional expression to the violent next level. Expression of emotion with violence is blatantly obvious, and the expression of such emotions, unlike the more sedate usual emotions, is easily read by a face blind person, and thus easily understood and easily transmitted if need be. If one cannot accept the isolation, or the indignation of being ignored, in desperation his thoughts may turn to violence as a last resort, though for most face blind people it seldom goes so far as to use force or take violent action. It is far more common to just seethe in the frustration and think of what one might do.
Face blind people may also find themselves on the receiving end of violence for the same reason. Non-impaired people may become frustrated when their emotional communications are what seems to them "ignored," and they may result to using force against the face blind person in desperation. This has happened to me more than once. If only these people knew what it was like to be ignored all the time! The frustration that triggered them was truly minuscule compared to what we put up with all the time. Reflecting upon these events makes one realize that the tolerance that face blind people have for others borders on remarkable.
Enjoying Emotions
One of our greatest pleasures as humans is to enjoy the flow of emotions coming from others. For many people, this is what they "live for." Emotions that you have to figure out are not nearly as enjoyable as those that come spontaneously from the circuits that recognize people. For the face blind person, it is possible that few emotions other than I'm-here will flow from that source, and this will definitely have an effect on what social circumstances he will find enjoyable.
At a social event, the face blind person may well enjoy just "being there" more than partaking much in any socialization going on. "Being there" makes the I'm-here emotion flow, while socializing requires invoking the less-fun need to figure out emotions. I'm-here is also stimulated by being noticed, and the face blind person may choose to limit his socialization to just the amount needed to feel "noticed."
The face blind person may well also enjoy activities where his personal recognition circuits get the greatest workout, because emotional feelings are a byproduct of their exercise. I recognize guys by their hair and jeans, for example, and for me no social encounter can compare to a day of hiking with long haired guys in jeans. On a day like that, I'll get a lot of exposure to the ways I identify people, and a lot of exposure to their movement, too, and as we've discussed, movement is rich in emotional content. Simply, such a day is one in which I will get a lot of I'm-here.
Some social situations for a face blind person will turn out to be very dull. Sitting around a table or in a dark bar, where I can only see people's faces, is for me emotionally very boring. To give you a sense of how boring, imagine how dull it would be for you to spend all day with people where you could only see their feet!
Another factor that enters into the enjoyment of social encounters is that while everyone has a face, some people may not have what the face blind person uses to recognize people. If someone is unable to stir the circuits that the face blind person uses to recognize people, that person will come off to the face blind person as emotionally boring.
The most devastating social situation for a face blind person to get into is to enter an employment situation that for him is emotionally lifeless. We spend many hours at our work, and to spend them without any emotional flow is like working among a bunch of machines. It is no fun. Far worse, the inevitable stress that comes with any job can overwhelm one when there are no enjoyable emotions to provide balance. To spend many hours daily in a place devoid of emotion goes beyond being not fun. To remain there is not mentally healthy.
So a face blind person will find it more of a challenge than most people to arrange for an emotionally-full life. Knowing why this is so may help one accept this situation to some degree, but as a human one still has emotional needs. To satisfy them, a face blind person may have to carefully select social settings, including his employment setting, so that those emotional needs are met. This selection process will perhaps reveal a requirement to be around certain types of people, or people who are doing certain things.
Accuracy
As is the task of recognizing people by the face, the task of deducing emotions from the face is performed less accurately by face blind people. In Chapter 7 we discussed how some face blind people deal with their inaccuracy in recognizing people by being conservative, while others liberally "recognize" strangers.
Well, it turns out that here one more parallel between recognizing people and recognizing emotions exists. Some face blind people when it comes to recognizing emotions are conservatives, recognizing few emotions. Others are liberals, "receiving" lots of emotions, quite a few of which may not really be there. These people may, in reacting to such emotions, have fears or other responses beyond what would normally be expected, while the conservatives may forge forward, oblivious for the most part to any disapprobations which might be thrown their way.
As with one's conservatism or liberalism with recognizing people, one's style of recognizing emotions does not seem to be a choice. And there is some speculation at this time that if one is conservative or liberal in one area, he will as well be that way in the other.
Other Facial Signals
In addition to emotions, people send other signals with the face. When people meet on the street, for example, they may communicate any of these messages by the face:
"I see you and acknowledge your presence, though I don't know you."
"I will walk over here (so you should walk elsewhere so as to not collide with me)."
"Let's start talking." (And later, "Let's stop.")
"I've seen you before, though I don't know who you are."
"I know you!"
As with emotions, the face blind person may not pick up some or all of these communications, or be able to tell them apart. He may not even be aware that most people can communicate such nuances with the face. His skills may be limited to telling whether a person is looking at him or not, and whether the person is smiling or not.
With this level of ability the face blind person does not get the answer to the question, "Which of the communications in the above list is being sent?" In many cases, the failure to receive these communications and act on them, particularly if the result is to show someone is not recognized who should be, is considered a grave social offense.
And as we discussed with emotions, one unable to receive certain facial signals may be unable to make them, and the failure to send these signals may also be considered a grave social offense.
In Conclusion
A major component of people's emotions comes in along with the means they use to identify people. For most people, who identify others by their face, this situation works very well. For the face blind person, who identifies people in other ways, this means that many emotions sent his way will routed off to a siding, while he picks up other emotions on another track. To compensate, the face blind person must do a lot more calculating to figure out people's emotions, something that for most people flows naturally. A lifetime of doing this may mean that the face blind person does not become adept at receiving emotions, and some emotions may not be picked up by him at all. This failure to receive emotions may impact his ability to send emotions, and his expressions may seem less "lifelike" than most people's do. Enjoying the emotions that flow from other people is a major part of enjoying life. A face blind person may discover that some social settings work poorly for him while others work well, and he will need to seek out the latter in selecting places to socialize and to work.
We next look at how face blindness can affect one's sexuality.

"Face Blind!" - Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Introduction
Chapter 2
Discovering Face Blindness
Chapter 3
Physical Causes of Face Blindness
Chapter 4
The Importance of Recognizing Others
Chapter 5
How Most People Recognize Others
Chapter 6
Ways To Recognize Others Without Using the Face
Chapter 7
How Non-Face Recognition Methods Work in Practice
Chapter 8A
...Bill: How I Tell People Apart
Chapter 8B
...Pertti: Recognition System - The Essence Model - BACK
Chapter 9
Effect of Face Blindness on Emotions - YOU ARE HERE
Chapter 10
Effect of Face Blindness on Sexuality - NEXT
Chapter 11
Effect of Face Blindness on Your Social Groups
Chapter 12
Understanding Why People Choose To Look Alike
Chapter 13
Ways To Improve Our Lives

How We Recognize Angry and Happy Emotion in People, Places, and Things

Joel Aronoff
Michigan State University, aronoff@msu.edu
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Darwin proposed and Ekman and Izard confirmed the presence of cross-cultural regularities in facial displays of emotion. Following their work, the author and his colleagues sought to find parallel mechanisms that would permit these displays to be decoded. A cross-cultural comparison of the display of anger and happiness in masks used in ritual social functions revealed that a set of geometric patterns, rather than actual facial features, conveyed these different emotional meanings. The power of nonrepresentational visual patterns to produce meaning was examined in a series of studies using materials that presented geometric shapes in a variety of line drawings, large-scale physical movement in classical ballet, and configurations among individuals in 17th-century Dutch art. Results across all studies suggested that for the emotions of anger and happiness, at least, meaning is carried in the geometric properties of the visual display.
Key Words: emotion expression • emotion recognition • Darwin • Ekman • multimethod • sign stimuli

blue

Benvenuti sul sito della Blue Emotion, dove troverete riunite le più importanti aziende produttrici di attrezzature fotosub e videosub: Gates, UltraLight, Light & Motion, Hartenberger, Aquatica, Sony, Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Sea&Sea, Epoque, Inon, Top Dawg, Subal, Subtronic...
Fondando la Blue Emotion nel 1992, ho voluto creare un centro altamente specializzato dove fotografi e video-operatori subacquei trovassero le migliori attrezzature.
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La diffusione di riprese subacquee ha contribuito allo sviluppo dell'attività stessa, ma occorre andare oltre, continuare a documentare e testimoniare, per creare una cultura di dominio pubblico, affinché le prossime generazioni guardino quella tavola blu con occhi diversi, consapevoli dell'esistenza di un mondo sommerso importante quanto l'aria che respiriamo.

How To Enjoy Everyday Life

by Joyce Meyer All of us have a large amount of time that we need to devote to “common life” or everyday business. You know what I mean—laundry, grocery store trips, doctor visits, washing the dishes, going to work, etc. We tend to see these chores as being quite different from and even far below our "spiritual life" or the things we do that we consider to be holy. Most of us who really love and are devoted to God prefer the holy times to the common. Holy times include praying, spiritual reading and meditation, sharing conversation about the Lord with friends, going to church or other spiritual meetings, etc. Seeing these two sides of our life as two entirely different categories usually causes quite a problem within the believer. Often we feel divided within ourselves, struggling to get finished with common life and everyday business so we can return to holy things because we feel that we are holier, or more right with God, when we are doing what we believe to be holy things. I believe this is one of the greatest deceptions of Satan. It keeps most people in a state of turmoil, dreading, and even despising, the tasks of common life and everyday business. All of us must do them; it’s part of life. They can’t be avoided. So we must have understanding about how, in reality, there’s no difference between common and holy, except in our minds. If we’ll read the Bible properly and not be so religious in our thinking, we’ll move into an area of freedom that will shake the gates of hell. Satan does not want you to enjoy your life. Naturally, if he can keep you thinking that God is only pleased with you when you’re engaged in some sort of so-called "spiritual activity," he can keep you unhappy a large part of the time. This misconception is one of his greatest tools to keep people from enjoying life. Often this comes as a vague feeling that makes believers miserable, and we don't even understand what’s wrong. All we know is that something is amiss. Everything we do is to be offered to the Lord; and if done so with a pure heart of love, it becomes holy. You can do common tasks, like go to the grocery store, and it’ll be just as holy as prayer, as long as you do it all to the glory and honor of God. In the realm of importance, prayer is certainly more important than a trip to the grocery store but not any holier. What I mean by prayer being more important is that it has eternal value, whereas a trip to the store or mopping the floor doesn't. Romans 14 is an excellent chapter in the Bible to bring liberty in this area. Verses 5 and 6 say: One man esteems one day as better than another [holier], while another man esteems all days alike [holy]. Let everyone be fully convinced (satisfied) in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. He also who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; while he who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. My personal translation of Romans 14:5,6 is that one man sees prayer and Bible study as better (holier) than ordinary tasks, while a person who’s really free in the Lord sees them all alike (all holy), because whatever he does, he does in honor of the Lord. This is true liberty—to be able to live an undivided life where we categorize some things as common and some as holy. As a result, we never enjoy the common things because we’re desperately trying to either avoid them completely or at least rush through them so we can get to those things that are holy. I just learned this lesson while traveling on an airplane to a speaking engagement. I was pondering the thought of how glad I would be when I got to my destination so I could pray and study. I was feeling very restless. The Lord began to minister to me that I needed to thoroughly enjoy the airplane ride, and it would be just as holy to Him if I would offer it to Him. He is holy, and He lives in you so that makes you holy. Therefore, wherever you go and whatever you do becomes holy. Now, I realize we’re growing in manifesting holiness, but I'm sharing that it’s His presence that makes things holy. Another thing that had quite an effect on me in this area was a plaque I saw in a pastor's office. It said, "My work is worship." As long as I remember that, I find myself enjoying everything in common life and everyday business, as well as prayer, Bible study and other things we define as spiritual. Join me in this liberated lifestyle and begin to enjoy everyday life.

Managing Your Emotions

by Joyce Meyer We all have emotions, and they’re here to stay. I believe one of the main goals of every believer should be emotional stability. We should seek God to learn how to manage our emotions and not allow them to manage us. An excerpt from the definition I found in the dictionary states that emotions are "to excite and to move out." Think about this: You're out shopping for a specific item you're in need of. You've made a commitment to the Lord to get out of debt. You've promised Him to tithe and give offerings as He directs. You've agreed to really watch your spending and not purchase things you don't need. But while shopping, you discover that the stores are having a big sale of 50 percent off the already marked down merchandise. What do you do? You get excited. The more you look around, the more excited you get. Emotions are rising higher and higher. They begin to move out, and part of the devil's plan is for you to follow your emotions. God wants you to use wisdom. Wisdom says wait a little while until the emotions settle down, then check to see if you really believe it's the right thing to do. The Bible says in Colossians 3:15 to be led by peace in making decisions. Don't let your emotions make your decisions. A good statement to remember is this: "Wisdom says wait; emotions say hurry." An emotional person is defined as: "One easily affected with or stirred by emotion; one who displays emotion; one with a tendency to rely on or place too much value on emotion; one whose conduct is ruled by emotion rather than reason." Be honest with yourself in this area. If you believe that you’re not managing your emotions, begin to pray and seek God for emotional maturity. In the past I experienced a lot of ups and downs, or what we call mood swings. This kind of behavior was hard on me, as well as everyone around me. I felt bad about myself. People who are out of control always feel unhappy with themselves. God created us to operate with a free will. We choose what we will do and what we won't do. There is a God-given desire inside the believer to do the right thing. When we allow our flesh to rule, we know we’re out of control; however, we’re created to operate with the fruit of self-control. Self-control is a freedom, not a bondage. You’re free to use wisdom, free to obey God, and free to follow the leading of the Spirit. You’re free not to be pushed around by your feelings. You don't have to do what you feel like doing. You’re free to do what you know is wise. Self-control will help you feel better about yourself. When I was experiencing so many ups and downs, it also made me physically tired. It takes a lot of energy to go through all kinds of emotional changes. I noticed that as God helped me learn to manage my emotions, I also had more energy. Maybe you should stop and ask the Lord if that's why you've been so tired lately. Do you let your emotions manage you? My moods were hard on my family too. After I was well on my way to emotional stability, my husband, Dave, revealed a secret. He told me that during the years I was emotionally unstable, while he would be driving down the highway after work at night, he would ponder the thought, I wonder what she will be like tonight? It’s really very sad to imagine a person in that kind of situation. My husband has always been very stable, and it’s very comforting to live with someone you can depend on to be steady and in control all the time. He was very happy for me, and himself also, when I began getting victory in this area. Children also need a stable atmosphere to grow up in. Stability is really an important issue for all of us. Jesus is referred to as "The Rock." You can depend on Him to be stable—the same Jesus all the time, always faithful, loyal, true to His Word and mature. He’s not one way one time and another way the next time. Jeremiah 17:8 and Psalm 1:3 both instruct us to be like trees firmly planted. First Peter 5:8,9 teaches us to be well-balanced and temperate (self-controlled) to keep Satan from devouring us. To withstand him, it says to be rooted, established, strong, immovable and determined. Philippians 1:28 tells us to be constantly fearless when Satan comes against us. Psalm 94:13 says God wants to give us power to stay calm in adversity. All of these scriptures are referring to being stable. I'm going to close with these statements for your consideration: 1. He who lives by emotions lives without principle. 2. We cannot be spiritual (walk in the spirit) and be led by emotions. 3. Emotions won't go away, but you can learn to manage them. 4. You can have emotions, but you can't always rely on them. Make emotional maturity a primary goal in your life!

Introduction

Emotion is one of the most controversial topics in psychology, a source of intense discussion and disagreement from the earliest philosophers and other thinkers to the present day. Most psychologists can probably agree on a description of emotion, e.g., what phenomena to include in a discussion of emotion. The enumeration of these parts of emotion are called the "components of emotion" here. These components are distinguished on the basis of physiological or psychological factors and include emotion faces, emotion elicitors, and emotion neural processes.
Components of Emotion
Common representationof angry emotion experience:"steamed up" with hot glowingeyes, and uncontrolled appearance. Is it the same acrosspeople?
Interpersonal aggression in the form of instrumental behaviors produced by skeletal muscles is often a concomitant of anger.
A bright idea can bring a pleasant emotion, or pleasant emotions can foster bright ideas.
The component that seems to be the core of common sense approaches to emotion, the one that most people have in mind when talking about human emotions, is the feeling component, i.e., the passion or sensation of emotion. For example, people generally agree that the state of mind during anger is different from that when one is happy. This component is also one of the most contentious in scientific discussions of emotion, raising many questions such as:
to what extent are such feelings, especially the claimed differences in quality, based on real physical differences?
is the feeling quality of a particular emotion shared among people?
what is the nature of the differences in quality among emotions?
what underlies or produces these feelings?
what importance or function do such feelings have?
Another obvious descriptive component of emotion is the set of behaviors that may be performed and observed in conjunction with an emotion. These behaviors are produced by the striated muscular system and are of two general types: gross behaviors of the body effected by the skeletal muscles and the so-called emotion expressions. These categories shade into each other because any behavior can be interpreted as expressing emotion. The gross body behaviors may have no apparent adaptive value, e.g., wringing and rubbing the hands or tapping a foot, or they may be directed towards a goal, e.g., striking something or running away. In the field of animal behavior, discovering the adaptive function and organization of behaviors in situations analogous to human emotion, and speculating on the evolutionary patterns of these behaviors is an established endeavor. This emphasis has not typically been given to the study of human emotions by psychologists. The facial and bodily behaviors called "emotion expressions" are indicators of emotion, as opposed to effecting some action or achieving some goal. These expressions can differentiate one emotion from another. The most widely discussed and investigated emotion expressions are the emotion faces (see the examples of emotional expressions).
Adrenalin is a secretion that affects many organs and may contribute to the felt quality of emotion.
A less obvious component of emotion is the set of internal bodily changes caused by the smooth muscles and glands. Chemicals secreted by the body's various glands are activated during emotion and spread to other parts of the body, usually by the blood, to act in diverse ways on the nervous system and other organs. Smooth muscles of the digestive system, circulatory system, and other bodily components can shift from their typical level or type of operation during emotion under the effects of chemical and neural action. This component includes some behaviors that can be observed, such as the constriction or dilation of the iris of the eye, possibly piloerection, and sweating, blanching, and flushing of the skin, and other responses that are relatively hidden, such as heart rate, stomach activity, and saliva production.
Computers often elicit frustration and anger
Another less observable component in emotion consists of the ideation, imagery, and thoughts that occur during emotion. These aspects of emotion are also cognitive activities, and can both give rise to an emotional event and be affected by it, e.g., thinking about a lost pet may evoke feelings of sadness, which may in turn evoke memories of a romance now finished. Since thoughts and other cognitions, like feelings, cannot be directly observed and are hard to measure, there is less understanding of how they fit into the emotion picture than other components.
The circumstances that give rise to emotions comprise another component, called the "elicitors" of emotion. These elicitors might be internal or external to the organism, e.g., a frightening pain in one's chest or a frightening dog at one's heels. Some events seem to activate similar emotion in people of all cultures, for example, the death of one's own child typically elicits sadness. Other things, such as what foods are relished or rejected with disgust, vary widely according to acculturation.
Finally, the neural processes that underlie much of the preceding activities can be considered a component of the emotion process, especially how the neurons and their emotional concomitants are organized centrally in the brain. Many contemporary research studies, and thus a lot of the research money, is focussed on anatomical and functional aspects of brain activity in regard to emotion.
Theories of Emotion
Beyond the descriptive approach to emotion, there are theories of emotion, which attempt to specify the interrelationships among components as described above and the causes, sources, and functions of emotional responses. Disagreement characterizes the intellectual climate surrounding emotion theories, but there are several works in print that summarize these approaches for the interested reader. The Theories of Emotion page of this section summarizes some of the most important theoretical statements on emotion that emphasize the role of the face.
Expression of Emotion
Emotion expression is another area of controversy, but at the descriptive level, some behaviors tend to occur with other components of emotion, and seem to reveal the quality of the emotion to an observer. The Emotion Expressions page of this section discusses the relations between emotion and facial expression.

Emotion and Facial Expression

Emotion and Facial Expression
Neither emotion nor its expression are concepts universally embraced by psychologists. The term "expression" implies the existence of something that is expressed. Some psychologists deny that there is really any specific organic state that corresponds to our naive ideas about human emotions; thus, its expression is a non sequitur. Other psychologists think that the behaviors referenced by the term "expression" are part of an organized emotional response, and thus, the term "expression" captures these behaviors' role less adequately than a reference to it as an aspect of the emotion reaction. Still other psychologists think that facial expressions have primarily a communicative function and convey something about intentions or internal state, and they find the connotation of the term "expression" useful. Some of these theoretical views are discussed briefly on the Theories of Emotion page. Regardless of approach, certain facial expressions are associated with particular human emotions. Research shows that people categorize emotion faces in a similar way across cultures, that similar facial expressions tend to occur in response to particular emotion eliciting events, and that people produce simulations of emotion faces that are characteristic of each specific emotion. Despite some unsettled theoretical implications of these findings, a consensus view is that in studies of human emotions, it is often useful to know what facial expressions correspond to each specific emotion, and the answer is summarized briefly below.
To match a facial expression with an emotion implies knowledge of the categories of human emotions into which expressions can be assigned. For millennia, scholars have speculated about categories of emotion, and recent scientific research has shown that facial expressions can be assigned reliably to about seven categories, though many other categories of human emotions are possible and used by philosophers, scientists, actors, and others concerned with emotion. The recent development of scientific tools for facial analysis, such as the Facial Action Coding System, has facilitated resolving category issues. The most robust categories are discussed in the following paragraphs. This page shows some thumbnails of emotion faces, and there are links to other emotion faces. Click on the thumbnail image for each emotion category to access other facial expression illustrations and facial analysis commentary on the expressive elements of each emotion face.
Happy
Happy expressions are universally and easily recognized, and are interpreted as conveying messages related to enjoyment, pleasure, a positive disposition, and friendliness. Examples of happy expressions are the easiest of all emotions to find in photographs, and are readily produced by people on demand in the absence of any emotion. In fact, happy expressions may be practiced behaviors because they are used so often to hide other emotions and deceive or manipulate other people. Consider this point when viewing invariably smiling political figures and other celebrities on television. Detecting genuine happy expressions may be as valuable as producing good simulations. Some of the differences in genuine versus false smiles are shown in the action of zygomatic major in Expression section, and more illustrations are available by clicking the happy thumbnail on the right.
Sad
Sad expressions are often conceived as opposite to happy ones, but this view is too simple, although the action of the mouth corners is opposite. Sad expressions convey messages related to loss, bereavement, discomfort, pain, helplessness, etc. Until recently, American culture contained a strong censure against public displays of sadness by men, which may account for the relative ease of finding pictures of sad expressions on female faces. A common sense view, shared by many psychologists, is that sad emotion faces are lower intensity forms of crying faces, which can be observed early in newborns, but differences noted between these two expressions challenge this view, though both are related to distress. Although weeping and tears are a common concommitant of sad expressions, tears are not indicative of any particular emotion, as in tears of joy.
Anger
Anger expressions are seen increasingly often in modern society, as daily stresses and frustrations underlying anger seem to increase, but the expectation of reprisals decrease with the higher sense of personal security. Anger is a primary concomitant of interpersonal aggression, and its expression conveys messages about hostility, opposition, and potential attack. Anger is a common response to anger expressions, thus creating a positive feedback loop and increasing the likelihood of dangerous conflict. Until recent times, a cultural prohibition on expression of anger by women, particularly uncontrolled rage expressions, created a distribution of anger expressions that differed between the sexes. The uncontrolled expression of rage exerts a toxic effect on the angry person, and chronic anger seems associated with certain patterns of behavior that correspond to unhealthy outcomes, such as Type A behavior. Although frequently associated with violence and destruction, anger is probably the most socially constructive emotion as it often underlies the efforts of individuals to shape societies into better, more just environments, and to resist the imposition of injustice and tyranny.
Fear
Fear expressions are not often seen in societies where good personal security is typical, because the imminent possibility of personal destruction, from interpersonal violence or impersonal dangers, is the primary elicitor of fear. Fear expressions convey information about imminent danger, a nearby threat, a disposition to flee, or likelihood of bodily harm. The specific objects that can elicit fear for any individual are varied. The experience of fear has an extremely negative felt quality, and is reduced, along with the bodily concommitants, when the threat has been avoided or has passed. Organization of behavior and cogitive functions are adversely affected during fear, as escape becomes the peremptory goal. Anxiety is related to fear, and may involve some of the same bodily responses, but is a longer term mood and the elicitors are not as immediate. Both are associated with unhealthy physical effects if prolonged.
Disgust
Disgust expressions are often part of the body's responses to objects that are revolting and nauseating, such as rotting flesh, fecal matter and insects in food, or other offensive materials that are rejected as suitable to eat. Obnoxious smells are effective in eliciting disgust reactions. Disgust expressions are often displayed as a commentary on many other events and people that generate adverse reactions, but have nothing to do with the primal origin of disgust as a rejection of possible foodstuffs.
Surprise
Surprise expressions are fleeting, and difficult to detect or record in real time. They almost always occur in response to events that are unanticipated, and they convey messages about something being unexpected, sudden, novel, or amazing. The brief surprise expression is often followed by other expressions that reveal emotion in response to the surprise feeling or to the object of surprise, emotions such as happiness or fear. For example, most of us have been surprised, perhaps intentionally, by people who appear suddenly or do something unexpected ("to scare you"), and elicit surprise, but if the person is a friend, a typical after-emotion is happiness; but if a stranger, fear. A surprise seems to act like a reset switch that shifts our attention. Surprise expressions occur far less often than people are disposed to say "that surprises me," etc., because in most cases, such phrases indicate a simile, not an emotion. Nevertheless, intellectual insights can elicit actual felt surprise and may spur scholarly achievements. Surprise is to be distinguished from startle, and their expressions are quite different.
Other emotion expressions and related expressions
Some psychologists have differentiated other emotions and their expressions from those mentioned above. These other emotion or related expressions include contempt, shame, and startle. Contempt is related to disgust, and involves some of the same actions, but differs from it, in part, because its elicitors are different and its actions are more asymmetrical. Shame also has a relation to disgust according to some psychologists, but recent evidence suggests it may have a distinct expression. Most psychologists consider startle to be different from any human emotions, more like a reflex to intense sudden stimulation. The startle expression is unique.

Love The Emotion Love

Love is not just a word, it is a beautiful emotion. It is not limited to human beings but it can be in any form, with any form. Some Love God, some have love for nature, some love gadgets, some have passion for man-machines. But it seems these days people are forgetting the meaning of love altogether. That emotion is slowly ruined by the fast-moving life of human race. Love is devotion and if you want to practice that devotion then you have to spend time with that. Love is not by being together or seeing each other everyday. Love is in your heart, the care you show for the person you are in love with. Love is in the small things you do for the people you care so that you can see that one smile on their faces for the efforts done by you. Love is giving, the more you give the more you receive. But never give it with an expectation of anything in return. If you expect then love has a power to hurt you. If you get whatever you have given in your relationship then be satisfied with that. Do not crib for what you don’t have. There are people who have lost their loved ones and now they do not have any chance to call them back. But they still love those whom they have lost. Sometimes you miss your chance by waiting for love to come to you. Do not wait just keep on giving as much as you can to the ones in need and to those who are deprived of this emotion. Find love in doing small things for others. Help those in need, show them your kindness and care. Have you ever noticed a smile on the face of a child after he gets a thing of his choice? If not, then go and check out. That smile brings a relief to the giver that someone is happy with a small effort done. It takes a very small effort to spread love; you just need a loving heart within yourself. SPREAD LOVE AND BE BLESSED!