Watermark

What lifts you?

Photo by Alan Parker ~ click for larger image

Main Entry:	lift
Part of Speech:	noun 2
Definition:	help
Synonyms:	aid, assist, assistance, boost, comfort, encouragement, hand, leg, leg up, pick-me-up, reassurance, relief, secours, succor, support
Source:	Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.1.1) Copyright © 2006 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Main Entry:	lift
Part of Speech:	verb 1
Definition:	move up
Synonyms:	arise, ascend, aspire, bear aloft, boost, bring up, build up, buoy up, climb, come up, disappear, disperse, dissipate, draw up, elevate, erect, goose, heft, hike, hike up, hoist, jack up, jump up, mount, move up, pick up, put up, raise, raise high, rear, rise, soar, take up, up, upheave, uphold, uplift, upraise, uprear, vanish
Antonyms:	push down
Source:	Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.1.1) Copyright © 2006 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

I've been thinking about this, having been visited lately by uplifting friends, and being more structured than usual in my introversion due to the Artist's Way exercises.

Medicinal Poetry

In case you feel guilty about frittering your time away here at Watermark, let me reassure you -- poetry is good for you.  From Scientific American, via dumbfoundry:

For this study [in Germany], healthy subjects practiced three activities: hexameter reading, controlled breathing at six breaths per minute and spontaneous breathing. They recited while walking, breathing and lifting their arms. The researchers found increased synchronization between heart rate and breathing during the poetry readings but not during the spontaneous breathing. Controlled breathing also boosted synchronization, though not to the extent of recitation. Also, subjects found poetry reading stimulating but controlled breathing boring.

Unfortunately:

Whether this recitation translates linguistically is another question. Rafael Campo, a poet and physician at Harvard Medical School, notes that hexameter in English is not one of the most appealing forms of poetry.

Still, one never knows . . . even free verse might be helpful.  So read, read, read.