The power of habits
Journal March
This month we are reading The Powe of Habits by Cahrles Duhigg, the fundamental idea of the book is that we all have small habits that either move us forward towards our goals or away from our goals. These habits are often based in systems that work for us or against us.
Throughout the book are diagrams and images that show why humans get stuck doing the things they do. Duhigg calls this the “habit loop” where people have a cue, routine, and a reward. One can’t exist without the other, which is why habits are so hard to break.
So my question is, in your yoga or movement practice, what habit loops are you stuck in? For me, for many years, it was the ashtanga vinyasa loop -why because it’s a traditional, widely practice method, that feels great in my body and mind. I have also been in Cross-fit loops too. They have both opened up so much to me. But with a greater understanding of what my body can do, where the range of motion in my joints go, what functions my body has- I can break this habit loop and get more from my body and mind. Before I go further, I am not bashing ashtanga or Crossfit- I’m just saying my body can do more ( and less), I use and value these practices greatly.
For example: in yoga postures where the arm is placed in a line ( think of trikonasana/ triangle pose). This is a geometrical shape, with many sacred meanings and benefits. But we are always scripted to ‘place’ our arm’ when actually it can move, not just in a circle, but in a big blob shape- offering mobility around the whole joint. Something I am in such need for when working at desks alot.
This month, we are exploring ‘where our body goes’ and challenging some of the habits we may be in and ready to move on from, both on and off the mat.
Try this ‘where your body goes flow’ (75 minutes) This is a recording of a live class. The Science’y Bit…
A growing number of researchers in various branches of psychology and neuroscience have worked on characterizing habits (e.g. Sheeran et al., 2005; Neal et al., 2006), explaining their neurobiological basis (e.g. Graybiel, 2008; Seger and Spiering, 2011; Gremel and Costa, 2013), studying the process of habit formation (e.g. Lally et al., 2010; Kaushal and Rhodes, 2015), developing methods for measuring habit strength (e.g. Gardner, 2015; Labrecque and Wood, 2015; Orbell and Verplanken, 2015), proposing interventions and policies for breaking and creating habitual behaviors (e.g., Verplanken and Wood, 2006; Lally and Gardner, 2013; Rothman et al., 2015), modeling the interaction between habitual and intentional processes in the control of actions (e.g., Daw et al., 2005; Botvinick and Weinstein, 2014; Cooper et al., 2014), and studying the relation of habits with certain psychiatric disorders (e.g., Gillan et al., 2011; Uniacke et al., 2018).
The study of habits has increasingly become an interdisciplinary enterprise, with contributions coming not only from psychology, neurosciences, and philosophy but also from fields such as political science (e.g., Aldrich et al., 2011), organizational studies (e.g., Cohen et al., 2014), marketing (e.g., Ji and Wood, 2007), behavioral economics (e.g. Maréchal, 2010), and transport studies (e.g., Schwanen et al., 2012).
While often used as a synonym for frequent or customary behaviour in everyday parlance, within psychology, ‘habits’ are defined as actions that are triggered automatically in response to contextual cues that have been associated with their performance: for example, automatically washing hands (action) after using the toilet (contextual cue), or putting on a seatbelt (action) after getting into the car (contextual cue). Decades of psychological research consistently show that mere repetition of a simple action in a consistent context leads, through associative learning, to the action being activated upon subsequent exposure to those contextual cues (that is, habitually). Once initiation of the action is ‘transferred’ to external cues, dependence on conscious attention or motivational processes is reduced. Therefore habits are likely to persist even after conscious motivation or interest dissipates. Habits are also cognitively efficient, because the automation of common actions frees mental resources for other tasks (Laly et al., 2010).
Habit-formation advice, paired with a ‘small changes’ approach, has been tested as a behaviour change strategy (Laly et al, 2008; Mcgowan et al., 2012). In one study, volunteers wanting to lose weight were randomised to a habit-based intervention, based on a brief leaflet listing 10 simple diet and activity behaviours and encouraging context-dependent repetition, or a no-treatment waiting list control. After 8 weeks, the intervention group had lost 2 kg compared with 0.4 kg in the control group. At 32 weeks, completers in the intervention group had lost an average of 3.8 kg (Laly et al., 2008). Qualitative interview data indicated that automaticity had developed: behaviours became ‘second nature’, ‘worming their way into your brain’ so that participants ‘felt quite strange’ if they did not do them. Actions that were initially difficult to stick to became easier to maintain. A randomised controlled trial is underway to test the efficacy of this intervention where delivered in a primary care setting to a larger sample, over a 24-month follow-up period (Beeken et al., 2012). Nonetheless, these early results indicate that habit-forming processes transfer to the everyday environment, and suggest that habit-formation advice offers an innovative technique for promoting long-term behaviour change (Rotheman, Sheeran & Wood, 2009).
