How to Be Happy #38: Versachill Out
Here’s a question: “Can reading poems relieve the physiological symptoms of stress and anxiety?” Writing for Nautilus, Marissa Grunes says, “Yes, it can.” In her article “Feeling Stressed? Read a Poem,” Marissa recounts the story of two literary scholars and biographers who, after experiencing a scary hospitalization of their daughter and finding nothing distracting or helpful to read in the waiting room, decided to put together “an anthology of poems to help people through dark times.” One of the two wondered, “Perhaps a mindful reading of a poem can help restore the balance of the nervous system.” (Their book is Stressed, Unstressed: Classic Poems to Ease the Mind.)
Grunes describes how a Harvard Medical School biofeedback researcher and clinician set out to test the versachillification [calming quality of poesy] effect. Marissa volunteered to be one of the test subjects. She got hooked up to a machine that measures HRV (heart rate variability) and cardio-respiratory synchronization. She was told to sit for two minutes and think about “painful, anxiety-inducing events” in her life. She did, and her HRV “tanked” and her breath “was all over the place.” She then read Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” silently to herself. The result: “My indicators rallied and even surged above my baseline levels.” In other words, she versachilled out.
In the nerdier part of her article, Marissa offers this information:
Within a given minute, your heart rate is not perfectly stable. In fact, it varies from beat to beat, moving from (say) 60 beats per minute to 80 beats per minute and then back down — all within a few seconds. It turns out high heart rate variability (HRV) in a resting state directly correlates with mental health, well-being, and even long-term resilience to stressors and trauma.
She then recounts how your heartbeat synchronizes with your breathing “when you’re relaxed and enjoying high HRV” and that reading rhythmic poetry, “especially long six-beat lines, such as ancient Greek poetry,” can increase resting HRV and cardio-respiratory synchronization and induce a “‘flow state’ in which mental focus becomes effortless and enjoyable.”
Well, that’s seems simple enough So, today’s lesson in how to be happy is to become a versachillicator. Eschewing those hoary ancient Greeks, I gave it a shot with my favorite poem, Ogden Nash’s “Fleas,” which goes like this:
Adam
Had’em
Sadly, I have no biofeedback equipment to test whether this poem is versachillifective. Given its length, probably not. However, repeating the poem creates a six-beat line, so I might achieve breath-heart synchroncity if I do this:
Adam Had’Em Adam Had’Em
Adam Had’Em Adam Had’Em
Adam Had’Em Adam Had’Em
…and so on. If you try this with “Fleas,” I recommend, based on my personal experience, doing it silently in your head rather than out loud as you walk down a crowded public street. Just saying.
(Image: R
