We Miss It if We Don’t Get Enough

Women do, anyway – Women: Why does talking with a girlfriend make us feel so good? If we don’t get enough “girl talk,” feel deprived. A new study has identified a likely reason: feeling emotionally close to a friend increases levels of the hormone progesterone, which reduces anxiety and stress.

Researcher Stephanie Brown says, “This study establishes progesterone as a likely part of the (chemical) basis of social bonding in humans.” Progesterone is a sex hormone that fluctuates with the menstrual cycle, and it’s also present in low levels in post-menopausal women and in men. Higher levels of progesterone increase the desire to bond with others, and may even give us a greater willingness to help other people, even at our own expense.

Brown says, “It’s important to find the links between biological mechanisms and human social behavior. These links may help us understand why people in close relationships are happier, healthier, and live longer than those who are socially isolated.”

You may move your head when you listen to music, but do you also do it when you talk? It turns out this happens more in conversations between women than it does when women and men are conversing with each other.

People use head motion during conversation to convey a range of meanings and emotions. When women and men converse together, the men use a little more head motion and the women use a little less. Scientists have discovered that this “mirroring process” of coordination helps people to feel a connection with each other and women may instinctively realize this when they are talking to other women.

If you like “girl talk,” remember that three of your favorite women will be presenting at our Dreamland Festival in June. Marla Frees will be doing what she calls a “gallery reading,” in which she picks out people in an audience that she has intuitions about. She will also be available for individual readings. Linda Moulton Howe will, for the first time, link newly discovered secret documents to attempts to back engineer alien technology involving crop circles. Anne Strieber will give a sort of reading herself: she will answer questions from audience members about their UFO and Visitor experiences, based on the information she learned from the half a million letters that Whitley received after publishing Communion. She can tell YOU if other people have experienced the same things you have. She did this in Vancouver and she’ll do it again in Nashville!

So come to the Dreamland Festival June 26-28, because we’re going to have anothergreat time!

To learn more, click here and here.

Art credit: Dreamstime.com

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