Friendships

One of the women I ride with every day sent this to me...it struck home!

They Teach It at Stanford 

In an evening class at Stanford the last lecture was on the mind-body

connection - the relationship between stress and disease. The speaker (head of

psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that one of the best things

that a man could do for his health is to be married to a woman whereas for a

woman, one of the best things she could do for her health was to nurture her

relationships with her girlfriends. At first everyone laughed, but he was

serious.

Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that

help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences.

Physically this quality “girlfriend time" helps us to create more serotonin -

a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling

of well being. Women share feelings whereas men often form relationships around

activities. They rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel

about certain things or how their personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports?

Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf? Yes. But their feelings? Rarely.

Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with our sisters/mothers,

and evidently that is very good for our health. He said that spending time with

a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging or working out at

a gym.

There's a tendency to think that when we are "exercising" we are doing

something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends, we are

wasting our time and should be more productively engaged—not true.

In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality personal

relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical health as

smoking!

So every time you hang out to schmooze with a gal pal, just pat yourself on

the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your health! We

are indeed very, very lucky.

Sooooo… let's toast to our friendship with our girlfriends. Evidently it’s

very good for our health.

Life isn't about surviving the storm; but how you dance in the rain.