City Living

Maria Arpa

Wednesday Whisper

29 August 2018

This week

City living

Plus…

Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness

and

the Wednesday Whisper

Home Sweet Home

After a slow holiday on buses, boats and trains, we ventured back home and needed to get to an airport. We arrived in the city around midday but having been away from any city for around 10 days, getting off the bus and taking in the city felt like an assault. We ordered some coffee and sat in a park, and it took a good 30 minutes for me to acclimatise to the hustle and bustle. I have noticed this sensation before when I was on a retreat in Scotland and then went to a supermarket and the lighting and colours felt like an assault.

So I wasn’t surprised to read this:

“There is evidence that strongly leads us to suspect that being in the city does something to a specific circuit in the brain that impairs your ability to deal with social stress,” says Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, director of University of Heidelberg’s Central Institute for Mental Health in Germany. Meyer-Lindenberg’s group previously found that people who were living in or grew up in cities showed stronger activation in the amygdala and cingulate cortex (brain areas involved in processing and regulating emotion), respectively, compared with those from rural areas.

Having been born and brought up on city living, I haven’t given it that much thought because urban is my normal. Now, I’m wondering what so much stimulation does and whether we can relate that to how aggressive people have become in cities when we add a cocktail of ‘screen stimulation’.

Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness

I’m thinking about silence, quiet and staring at the sea and trees and as I am back in the city now, I’m considering how to build this in to everyday life.

The Wednesday Whisper

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2 Comments

Minna Bruce
Posted 6 years ago Reply

This is fascinating.. I immediately relate it to my own experience and just want to say that as a ‘country person’ through and through, having lived and worked in London for 15 years and truly loved that experience too, probably partially because I knew I was able to retreat to the country whenever I liked, I also know that it’s because I am able to find and tap into the peace of the country side whilst in the urban environment.
This is something that I do every day that I am there. It is almost as important to the soul as breathing is to the body.
There are many ways that I achieve this the main one being visually and the second through connection.
I think for me the key is a matter of absorbing the visual rather than just a cursory observation of it.. and I think the secret with making the connection to people is that it involves eye contact.. which links us even momentarily to another soul, thus providing a grounding to something real.
That sounds a bit airy fairy but actually it’s the exact opposite.. both are about contact to the earth and to creation.. therefore for me a ‘rural reality’.
- Maria Arpa
  Posted 6 years ago Reply
  
  Thanks, Minna. You have captured something very important ‘I am able to find and tap into the peace of the country side whilst in the urban environment’. A while ago, when I used to take a morning walk to the local pool in a traffic calmed area, I made it a plan to look people in the eye and say good morning to everyone. It was a great experience and everyone always said good morning back. Now that the swimming pool is directly across the road, I no longer have to walk to it. In Chicago, I was startled but happy by people actually striking up conversations and saying good morning spontaneously in residential areas. So I love the connection to people. In terms of the environment though, no matter how many parks I visit, I do notice the traffic, pollution and noise of the inner city and I am beginning to feel it as something that impacts me.