NUMBER CRUNCH WE ASKED, YOU ANSWERED According to our Instagram followers: In the past year, has your business been “up” or “down”? Have you downsized/cut staff hours within the last year? YES 29% NO 71% Will COVID change the way you operate your business post-pandemic? 59% WELLNESS 41% YES 73% NO 27% to you, one’s community or social network (bonding); by connecting with people from different or more distant networks (bridg-ing); or by connecting with the right resources and services of institutions, or-ganizations or authorities (linking). 4) Adapt your know-how and expertise to the new social rules. The Public Health Agency of Canada gives us recommendations and guidelines to continuing our activities. It is for every-one to adapt according to their field of expertise, re-specting guidelines as much as possible without forget-ting that a human being must also be in a social re-lationship to be happy. No response model is per-fect but we have the capacity to learn from others and adapt constantly to improve our-selves. It is time to stand to-gether and rely on each other. — Tegwen Gadais, Professor, Département des sciences de l’activité physique, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. 4 ways to fill the need to socialize during the COVID-19 pandemic Human beings are fun-damentally social: From birth to death, human beings need others to live, survive, develop and die. Our youth is influenced by the quality of our relationships with our parents and families and by the education we receive. It is also influenced by the envi-ronment in which we live. People we meet influence us positively and negatively. Our friends provide us with enter-tainment, enriching experi-ences, shared emotions and memories. Likewise, our col-leagues allow us to evolve, serving as examples or coun-ter-examples. A known and recognized need: Several theories can explain why our need to so-cialize is fundamental. One of the best known is Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, developed in 1943 and often represent as a pyramid. Maslow indicated that the first two levels (physiological and safety) are linked to the assets and the context in which we evolve. The others www.Cndoctor.ca are necessary to satisfy our needs for food (parents, farm-ers), shelter (family) or secu-rity (police, firefighters, doc-tors, the state). On a second level, Maslow talked about being and more psychological needs, such as love or belonging (to friends, to a community, to a family), but also the development of esteem (being part of a group, being useful in society). These needs, again, require others to fulfil them. The expression of social needs: The human being evolves in three types of envi-ronments that reinforce the expression of their social need: the physical, cultural and human environments. The physical environment represents the place where we live, the weather in our region or the services availa-ble to ensure our basic needs (groceries, health, running water). The cultural environ-ment is the set of spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional elements that con-dition our existence and give rhythm to our calendars. Human environments in-clude the people who condi-tion our values, our ideolo-gies and our ways of acting. Our research review also revealed that there are six pillars that have a major influ-ence on our socialization: education, leisure, work, econ-omy, politics and justice. Finally, we also need alone time to recharge and discon-nect from social life. Here are four tips to help fill the need to socialize: 1) Focus on various forms of physical distancing and not social. We are social beings and it is extremely difficult for us to live without the contact of others for a long time. 2) Favour a reasonable and temporary use of technolo-gies because they will never replace the need to see each other in person. 3) Create opportunities to meet -when allowed -in order to strengthen one’s social capital. Do this by connecting with those close May/June 2021 Chiropractic and Naturopathic Doctor 7
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