Amit Sood’s “Resilient Living”
As a way to kick off Viterbo’s Seven Rivers Science Symposium, Amit Sood, M.D., from Mayo Clinic, gave two key notes on the importance of resilient living.
Sood directs the Mind-Body Medicine Initiative and is the creator of Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Resilient Mind program. He is the author of multiple books and completed degrees in medicine from three different institutes including Gandhi Medical College, All India Institute of Medical Sciences and Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Sood began his key note address with enthusiastic remarks about the importance of stressors.
“You need your stressors,” says Sood. He explains that there exists an important balance, though, as too many stressors can be toxic and none at all can hurt a person just the same.
At the beginning of his research on the mind and mindfulness, Sood asked himself one very important question: “What is the big idea?”
He went on and explored control and meaning in human life.
“Humans love control,” states Sood “And meaning is very important.”
Concepts that hold pain, such as birth, would be avoided if not for the meaning behind it, which in this case, would be the birth of another human life.
Sood explained further that Earth and life is progressing so much faster than our brains that there are really two options left: either slow the change or help our brains catch up to the progression.
Since the first option is out of our control, Sood decided to find ways to help the mind catch up.
Training the brain is not an easy task, though.
“Letting go of worries and distractions is very complicated,” says Caitlin Fallon.
Introducing a concept called Morning Gratitude, Sood explains the brain can be helped with shorter practices that hold more emotion.
This type of gratitude is practiced by novel behavior.
“When I come home from work, I imagine I haven’t seen my family in a month,” Sood explains.
The behavior he presents creates a better appreciation and thankfulness for family. It brings stronger connections in all relationships.
Sood helped the audience feel this gratification as well by participating in a two-minute group activity. The audience closed their eyes and minds followed the voice and words of Sood. Some of these words urged the audience to find their childhood self and wave to them, think of their spouse’s eyes and find a memory with a parent.
Sood’s connection with the audience resulted in ecstatic students and members of the community.
“He talked in this engaging way,” says Valerie, a sophomore nursing major. “He asked questions and made us feel included.”
Another student, Jose Gonzalez, enjoyed Sood’s talk as well.
“I think he had some interesting points,” explains Gonzalez. “One being that distractions have caused us to spend only an average of 90 seconds in the evening with our families whereas we spend at least two minutes with a friend.”
The collection of points Sood made throughout his talk helped expand the understanding of the mind and help people practice the concepts he explained.
In the end, there was at least one solid conclusion Sood presented, and that was that with the mind, anything is possible.