Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

Building on Jack’s love of birds and bird-feeding in his garden – new research shows that listening to birdsong may actually benefit your mental health and improve sadness and depression.  Researchers took people with and without depression and then made them feel sad in the laboratory by playing movie clips. Sidenote – I read another study where they made people feel sad by playing a piece of Russian classical music slowed down to half speed and matched with sad faces! It’s not uncommon in psyc studies to mess around with people’s emotions and then make them feel better.  Then taught people mindfulness breathing or gave them opportunity to listen to birdsong. Both of these treatments led to people feeling happier. Listening to birdsong helped peoples heart rates to return to normal functioning, indicating it was good for the body as well as the mind.  What are the implications of this? Both are helpful at improving people’s mood. Mindfulness requires more effort from a person and learning a sk