Wired for Compassion

by David Hamilton

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David Hamilton. Wired for Compassion, Hay House USA 2010 $14.00 Also called Why Kindness is good for you, Hay House UK 2010 £9.99. 286pp.     

This is David Hamilton’s latest book, about helping people understand science and its practical applications of the power of the mind on the body. It is down to earth and full of facts about the biology of kindness and compassion with lots of inspiring stories and practical suggestions. This book convinces us that the benefits of kindness, compassion, gratitude and forgiveness are necessary for our health, happiness, long life and species survival. The book is replete with scientific evidence, including 40 pages of references but he manages to use this persuasion in an easy to read appealing way. In fact, it should appeal to a wide audience from doctor to therapist to the average layperson.

Hamilton argues that for our ancestors to be successful they needed the strong group bonding that is created by kindness and compassion.  Negative emotions which stress us decrease our survival ability because our bodies function less well. Kindness and compassion and having friends and loved ones to share with and depend on is what got our ancestors through perilous times. Evolution has always been about survival and our specific genetic material that carries these qualities would have been selected because they helped to form the bonds that kept groups together.

Hamilton shows us that kindness and compassion practiced regularly cause structural change to the brain, especially the pre-frontal cortex.  Our neural connections grow with showing kindness.

Kindness and compassion also promote physical health. For instance, they release the hormone oxytocin in our brain and our bodies. Oxytocin is cardiopotective, preventing our arteries from hardening and dilating our blood vessels. It also encourages wound healing.  Kindness, compassion and the flow of oxytocin it produces may be more important than our diet in protecting us from heart disease.

Kindness and compassion strengthen our immune system and therefore help us live longer. Inflammation is a primary cause of ageing. Oxytocin produced by the feelings created by acts of kindness and compassion stimulates the vagus nerve, deceasing the production of free radicals that create inflammation and that accelerate the ageing process.

No longer can we think of kindness and compassion as something that is only of benefit to others.  At the deepest biological levels in the body, it benefits us too.

There is one small chapter that talks about kindness towards ourselves. I would have liked a bit more emphasis in the book on this issue, since surely we could expect "as without so within." Kindness with the wrong balance can end up as martyrdom, or being a people pleaser or a doormat. The Bible tells us to love each other as ourselves and it seems to me there is an inclination in this book to encourage people to give away to others more that we give to ourselves.

Hamilton’s inspiring, modern, attractive delivery of the book actually makes you want to go out and be kind.  At the end of the book there are pages of practical ideas and exercises to encourage us to put kindness into practice. One example is The 21 day Kindness Challenge as Amelia Earhart said,

“No kind action ever stops with itself.  One kind action leads to another.  Good example is followed.  A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions and the roots spring up and make new trees.  The greatest work of kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves”

Review by Kathy Adams BSc RGN AAMET ARH
Integrated Medicine Therapist, London, England.
www.integratedmindbodyhealth.co.uk

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