CONNECTED TO EVERYWHERE BUT NOT TO EACH OTHER?

Much has been written about the wonders of being connected through the internet to the world and the potential problems of changing how we connect to each other.  My daughter forwarded an article from the NY Times by Barbara Fredrickson about this topic.  Ms. Fredrickson is a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and she was writing about research that she and her colleagues have completed that is published in a recent issue of "Psychological Science."  They measured the capacity for people to have warm interpersonal connections in daily life by having half of the participants chosen at random participated in a six week workshop on a very old mind-training practice called Metta that is translated as "loving kindness." that teaches developing warmth and tenderness towards oneself and others.  The participants who were exposed to the loving kindness workshop, were more positive and socially connected and also had improved "vagal tone."  

Vagal tone is the connection between your brain and your heart and other organs.  The higher the vagal tone, the better your brain is regulating your internal organs and immune system.  Also, Fredrickson referenced Stephen Porges, a behavioral neuroscientist, who has shown that vagal tone is important to facial expressivity and the abiity to tune into the frequency of the human voice.  Thus, it would seem that a higher vagal tone could improve one's capacity to connect to others, form friendships and be empathic.

So, it might be better to put down the i phone and say hello to someone.