Faidra Papanikolaou, April 21 2021 “A life experienced only through the mind and its stories is like a black and white picture of a beautiful sunset” (Doyle, 2014, p. 11) Humans seem constantly lost in their thoughts, listening and believing daunting stories about the future, or experiencing guilt about their…

Yagmur Idil Ozdemir, April 7 2021 How many times have we heard this golden advice: “listen to your heart” or this one “listen to your gut” Everyday we listen to our own body to navigate through our highly complex psychosocial and physical world. Our daily decisions and actions depend on…

Faidra Papanikolaou, February 23 2021 This short article aims to describe how awareness of our bodies influences our stress response and how a lack of body awareness may increase the risk of “unconscious” stress, which can be the source of mental and physical health problems. …

Yagmur Idil Ozdemir, January 14 2021 We all want to reduce the negative impact of stress from our daily lives, but we cannot do this without first a clear understanding of what is our stress, and when does it get unhelpful. So in this blog post, we will dive into…

Yagmur Idil Ozdemir, January 8 2021 Have you been experiencing stress that sometimes doesn’t seem to just go away? Do you worry that this could transform into a persistent health issue? We hope that you did not answer yes to these questions, but if you did, you are not alone…

Yagmur Idil Ozdemir, November 13 2020 The link between oxytocin, CT afferent fibers and our wellbeing Oxytocin is a hormone that has wide-reaching importance in regulating our social well-being and mental wellness. Oxytocin is a type of neuropeptide, which is a signalling molecule in our nervous system. Oxytocin is released…

Yagmur Idil Ozdemir, November 6 2020 Our touch carries messages to other people Findings that extend from neuroscience to developmental psychology support show that touch has regulatory effects in our social well-being, and the CT fibers we covered before are the most likely conductor of this effect. The importance of touch in our social connections is well…

Yagmur Idil Ozdemir, October 30 2020 CT-fiber and its implications in our well-being The 4 groups of low-threshold mechanoreceptors that we covered in our previous blog are highly studied, but they are not the only types of mechanoreceptors worth exploring. The discrete C-afferent tactile fibers, or CT-fibers for short, innervate a heterogeneous group of mechanoreceptors that are…

Yagmur Idil Ozdemir, October 23 2020 How does it work? The sense of touch that our skin allows is so innate and essential to our identity, but how much do we know about our skin and how it allows us to feel touch? Follow this series of posts on touch to learn more. We…