Rumya S Putcha is an assistant professor in the Institute for Women’s Studies, as well as in the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on colonial and anticolonial thought, particularly around issues such as citizenship, race, gender, sexuality, the body and the law. After years of ethnographic research on dance and yoga in both India and the United States, she started the research blog ‘Namaste Nation: Orientalism and Yoga in the 21st Century’, on how yoga cultures reveal racialised ideas of the body and health. Professor Putcha’s current book projects include ‘Mythical Courtesan | Modern Wife: Womanhood, Performance, and Feminist Praxis in Transnational India’ and ‘Namaste Nation: Wellness Cultures and Orientalism in the 21st Century’.

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Rumya Putcha

Rumya S Putcha

Speaker

Rumya Putcha, Assistant Professor at the Institute for Women's Studies at University of Georgia, USA, discusses the Sanskrit origins of the word ‘namaste’ and the problematic use of it in yoga classes today.

24 perspectives from medicine, science, religion and poetry, and audio descriptions of some artworks, with BSL and complete transcripts.

Joy and Tranquillity digital guide

Rumya Putcha talks about the word namaste and yoga

Rumya Putcha talks about the word namaste and yoga by Wellcome Collection

What do you see when you hear “namaste”? What do you think it means?

Namaste is not a word, but rather a complete sentence in Sanskrit – “I bow to you”. Across India, a related phrase one might hear more often in social settings is “namaskar” or “namaskaram”.

Today, however, namaste appears as a way to signal the conclusion of a yoga session. So how did this happen? How did namaste become tethered to what we call yoga?

Namaste arrived in the Anglophone world by way of imperialism. Through British colonial contact, certain embodied phrases, like namaste, became what colonial administrators considered representative of Indian culture.

For example, in the 19th century, namaste denoted a “Brahmin Hindu gesture” for British sociologists and anthropologists. In survey records, they describe namaste as a “bowing posture” with “hands pressed together”. Namaste and its associated body language represented, both sonically and visually, that which made Hindus culturally different from both their Muslim and Christian counterparts. Because of this, namaste operated as a kind of sign – a way for those who considered themselves race scientists to identify, categorise and study what they believed were uniquely Hindu social behaviours.

In these colonial records, the written term namaste, related to but separable from the bowing posture and hand gesture, appears as a marker of the authentic Hindu, that is, an upper-caste, Brahmin man. And it is this colonial etymology many scholars of Hinduism and of India use to trace the history and the meaning of namaste.

In the 20th century, namaste emerged as a signpost of Hindus specifically and of India more generally. Today, in the global and capitalist racial imagination, namaste, as a phrase, not only operates as a signpost, but its gesture has also come to signify related ideas of spirituality, exoticism, authenticity, and of course, yoga.

Rumya Putcha talks about the word Namaste and Yoga

Thomas Dixon is Professor of History at Queen Mary University of London, where he researches and teaches the history of emotions. His public-facing work can be found on The Emotions Lab website, including work for BBC Radio, and his award-winning podcast series ‘The Sound of Anger’. Dixon is Principal Investigator on the Wellcome Trust Collaborative Award, ‘Living with Feeling: Emotional Health in History, Philosophy, and Experience’. His books include ‘Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation in Tears’ (2015) and ‘From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category’ (2003). He leads the ‘Developing Emotions’ project, promoting emotional literacy in UK primary schools.

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Thomas Dixon

Thomas Dixon, Professor of History at Queen Mary University of London, explores the secular shift from passions and sentiments to emotions in the 19th century.

Thomas Dixon talks about emotions

Thomas Dixon talks about emotions by Wellcome Collection

For most of Western history, strong feelings of joy and sorrow, desire or hatred, hope and despair were thought of as “passions of the soul”. The powerful passions were distinguished from milder affections and sentiments, including familial love and compassion. Our modern category of ‘the emotions', is a much more recent invention. So how did we get from passions to emotions, and what difference has it made?

The word ‘emotion’ entered the English language from the French émotion in the 17th century. It meant a kind of physical agitation or commotion. So you might talk about the ‘emotion’ of a tree, meaning the wind was rustling its leaves, or a great ‘emotion’ among the people, meaning a public disturbance. ‘Emotion' only took on its modern, psychological meaning in the 19th century, as part of a self-consciously scientific approach to the mind. 

The Scottish philosopher, who I think of as the inventor of the emotions, was Dr Thomas Brown, who died in 1820. Later pioneers, including Charles Darwin and William James, adopted Brown’s terminology and applied it to the new science of psychology. 

Ever since then, scientists of the mind have tended to lump together all our feelings, sentiments, passions and affections in the capacious category of ‘the emotions’.

What difference has that made? There are two main legacies.

First, passions and affections were understood in moral terms – as good or evil. ‘The emotions', by contrast, were formed in a more secular and scientific spirit. They weren’t good or evil; they were inherited bodily inclinations – neither good nor bad in their own right, but just natural. 

The second legacy is to do with the relationship between thinking and feeling. Earlier theories included categories that were both rational and emotional. So, for instance ‘affections’ and ‘sentiments’ combined reason with passion, light with heat.

The new category of ‘the emotions’, however, was from the outset starkly contrasted with the intellectual states of the mind. In this way, the contrast between the head and the heart became even more firmly entrenched.

So the next time you talk about experiencing an ‘emotion’, remember that people haven’t always talked, and written, this way.

Maybe what you’re feeling is a passion, or an affection, or a sentiment, instead?

Joshua Virasami is a London-born artist, writer and political organiser involved in various movements including Occupy and Black Lives Matter. Joshua uses writing, film, music and direct action to educate, agitate and organise toward social change. As well as being a political activist in the UK, he has spent time studying and travelling in Balochistan, Kurdistan, Mauritius and many other countries around the world. He is the author of ‘How to Change It: your indispensable guide to activism’ (2020) with #Merky Books.

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Joshua Virasami

Artist, writer and political activist Joshua Virasami talks about the relationship between activism and hope.

Joshua Virasami talks about joy and protest

Joshua Virasami talks about joy and protest by Wellcome Collection

Suffering is perhaps the most universal of human conditions. Consequently, many stories we tell ourselves as humans circle to working through this intense state of being – suffering. Salvation, then, becomes one of the most sought-after of lifelines – deliverance from the tyrannies of loss, of sickness, of exploitation, of oppression.

Activism, for many of us, at its essence, is about imagining a place beyond suffering, a slice of heaven on earth, and fighting for it. Taking up space on a grey pavement, with hundreds of other protestors, eyes closed, singing as loud as possible, “we gon’ be alright”, one of the unofficial Black Lives Matter anthems. Activism is not just concerned with destination, it is concerned with journey, and love, joy, and solidarity on the way, is the reason we stay.

That song, ‘Alright’, is from the seminal album ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’, where the rapper Kendrick Lamar looks again at Black America, a place, he suggests, where redemption is a rocky road. Activism offers redemption, and activists are like ancestral imaginal discs, engines of transformation in the chaotic cocoon struggling for an entirely new way of being – for metamorphosis.

“Sous les pavés, la plage!” Beneath the pavement, the beach. This was one of the rallying cries of May ’68; it means many things to many people, but to me – someone whose parents migrated from the pristine reefs of Mauritius, which sink down below the Maroon mountain enclaves of escaped slaves – it means “great possibilities lie very close to us”, or, as the writer and activist Arundhati Roy so beautifully put it: “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

Amalia Pica’s work here for me resembles that heavily charged pause, full of possibility; blank, but with a positive vision saturating the ether.

Activism is world-bridging work, and it comes as no surprise to me that the vision of abolition and freedom which Black Lives Matter summons forth finds mass appeal in the young activists on campus, in college, or on the block. They are the dream workers, clipboards on doorsteps, podcasts on pillows, tugging at a positive vision of tomorrow, knowing – We can win.

George Vasey is a curator currently working on projects with Wellcome Collection and Leeds Art Gallery. He has curated exhibitions and projects in public, academic and commercial contexts. He has previously worked as a curator at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland and as a curatorial fellow at Newcastle University. In 2017 he co-curated the Turner Prize. His writing has been published in Art Monthly, Art Review, Burlington Contemporary, Frieze and Mousse, as well as numerous artists’ catalogues and books. He regularly teaches and has mentored artists, writers and curators for various organisations.

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George Vasey

georgegvasey.com

Co-curator George Vasey describes the ancient Greek and Roman joyous celebrations of Bacchus and the arrival of spring.

George Vasey describes ‘Athenians Celebrate Bacchus’

George Vasey describes 'Athenians Celebrate Bacchus' by Wellcome Collection

This black-and-white print captures a moment of ecstatic joy, and it references an ancient festival celebrating the god of wine, known as Dionysus to the Ancient Greeks and Bacchus to the Romans.

In the centre of the image, a goat is being brought to be sacrificed while semi-naked Athenians are wearing masks and vine leaves. They dance in abandon under a Bacchus statue, who is depicted as a young child holding a bunch of grapes.

In the background to the left of the main action, two women hang effigies of the god on tree branches. At a tree further in the background, a naughty goat can be seen damaging the bark of a tree.

While Roman literature portrays these festivals in simplistic terms – as a space of partying and drinking – they also served an important religious function. By losing their sense of self, people could unite with the divine through their ecstatic state. This would lead to physical and mental elevation. Dionysus was a cause for joy among mortals, as he made all sorrow disappear and brought sleep and forgetfulness of daily suffering.

From festivals to sports arenas, night clubs and carnivals, societies throughout history have designated spaces for ecstatic release as an important release valve from the stresses and strains of everyday life.

Sarah Garfinkel is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London. Her work centres on body-brain interaction underlying emotion and cognition, particularly in conditions such as anxiety, autism, PTSD and psychosis. Her research with autistic adults has led to the development of a new therapy technique using interoceptive training to reduce anxiety. Sarah was selected as one of 11 researchers on the Nature Index 2018 Rising Stars. She has published over 70 papers and articles in a range of scientific journals and has featured in several radio and TV shows.

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Sarah Garfinkel

Sarah Garfinkel, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, UK, explores changing sensations in the body, such as heart rate, and connections to the experience of happiness and optimism.

Sarah Garfinkel talks about optimism and the heart

Sarah Garfinkel talks about optimism and heart rate by Wellcome Collection

The shaping of emotional experience through internal changes in the body has long been recognised. In 1894, the American philosopher William James argued that the mental aspects of emotion, the “feeling states”, are a product of physiology – or the body’s internal signals.

Our heart does not pound because we are afraid; fear arises from our pounding heart.

Similarly, feelings of optimism and happiness have also been connected to changes in the body. Both heart-rate deceleration and heart-rate acceleration are observed in happiness and joy. High heart rate variability or HRV, which is the variation in the time interval between heartbeats, is associated with resilience and the potential to be both optimistic and stoical at times of adversity.

How the body is today can also predict emotions tomorrow; higher rates of HRV can predict optimism levels in the future.

Experiments also show that how we perceive internal bodily sensations influences how we experience emotions. As emotional feelings are thought to arise, in part, through the sensing of internal bodily changes, those individuals who are better able to sense bodily sensations, a process known as interoception, tend to experience emotions with greater intensity.

Every time our heart beats, it sends a signal to our brain, so our brains are in constant and dynamic communication with our internal bodily organs. In addition to this “neural sensing” of our hearts, we can also sense them consciously – where we may suddenly become aware of their pounding, or of a skipped beat.

And these changes in how our heart beats – and our neural and conscious perception of these – can help shape our emotional feeling states. That acceleration of our heart to pure joy can contribute to feelings of happiness.

So, next time you feel a strong emotion, take a moment to sense associated bodily changes. Could these be contributing to how you are feeling?

Laurie Britton Newell is a senior curator at Wellcome Collection and co-curator of the ‘Joy’ and ‘Tranquillity’ exhibitions, part of the season ‘On Happiness’ (2021), and she curated the exhibition ‘Somewhere in Between’ (2018). She previously ran a rural curatorial platform in the USA and taught at the University of Colorado. Prior to that she worked as a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where she curated critically acclaimed exhibitions such as ‘Memory Palace’ (2013), ‘Make Lab’ (2011), ‘1:1: Architects Build Small Spaces’ (2010) and ‘Out of the Ordinary: Spectacular Craft’ (2008). She writes about contemporary creative practice for books, magazines and newspapers.

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Laurie Britton Newell

lauriebrittonnewell.com

Co-curator Laurie Britton Newell describes the writer Octavia E Butler’s commonplace books, where she wrote down personal statements of self-encouragement.

Laurie Britton Newell describes Octavia E. Butler’s notes

Laurie Britton Newell describes Octavia E. Butler’s notes by Wellcome Collection

In this case there are two note pages that the American writer Octavia E Butler wrote to herself. They give some insight into the feelings, aspirations and struggles she had within her career and personal life. 

They were handwritten by Butler with different-colour pens, on different-sized paper. Certain words and sentences have been highlighted in contrasting colours and they jump from the page.

One page taken from a spiral notebook – she wrote in the late Seventies -  is full of statements of self-encouragement.

She starts with “I shall be a bestselling writer” and goes on to mention which newspapers she wants to be on bestselling lists of. Further down the page she lists the things that she would like to do with the money from her books. She writes:

“I will help poor black youngsters to go to college” and “I will get the best healthcare for my mother and myself”.

The closing sentences are a sort of mantra that’s repeated and underlined throughout the text: “So be it! See to it!” Writing these motivational and affirming notes were part of a lifelong practice she had, willing something from thinking into being.

In 2020, 14 years after her death, she reached the New York Times bestseller list for her book ‘Parable of the Sower’.

The second note in this case is more succinct. It sets out her overarching goal as a writer; it is a written in green, blue and red pen:

Co-curator George Vasey describes a photograph by Steve Budman from 1971 of an anti-Vietnam War student protest, which took the form of a smiley face created by human bodies.

George Vasey describes the ‘Smiley Face Protest’

George Vasey describes the 'Smiley Face Protest' by Wellcome Collection

This black-and-white photograph depicts around 50 people in a field, holding hands to form the image of a smiley face. People are wearing flares and duffle coats, which dates the image. The photograph was taken in the winter of 1971. They are students at the University of Maryland in the US, protesting against the Vietnam War, posing for a photographer from the college magazine.

People are standing in a large circle on the outside of the image, enclosing a smaller line of figures suggesting an upturned mouth. Above that are two small groups huddled together, forming two eyes.

The photograph is taken from a slightly elevated position, and everybody is looking at the camera and smiling. The students decided to form the image of a smiley face, which had become an increasingly popular icon at the time. The photographer has said that they did this gesture in response to clashes between police and protestors on campus, and wanted to create a positive and cheerful image.

From Extinction Rebellion to acid house, protest movements and youth groups have often used the image of the smiley face. The icon has become known for its countercultural associations, suggesting that the act of protest and making change is a way of expanding what happiness is and who gets to experience it.

Co-curator Laurie Britton Newell describes Charles Le Brun’s 17th-century engraving ‘Joy with Tranquillity’, made to illustrate his theory on the passions of the soul.

Laurie Britton Newell describes ‘Joy with Tranquillity’

Laurie Britton Newell describes ‘Joy with Tranquillity’ by Wellcome Collection

We are standing in front of a large book of prints. It includes black-and-white illustrations of the facial expressions drawn by the French painter Charles Le Brun. 

The illustrations capture different “passions” of the soul.  

They were first created by Le Brun in 1668. He believed that the human soul showed its “passions” in the movements of the face, and he created a visual classification system to support his idea. 

This went on to be influential for many centuries. 

On this open page, there is an image of a woman with a serene expression on her face. The title below describes it as a depiction of “Joy with Tranquillity”.

Underneath the image, a short caption reads: “Very little alteration is remarked in the face of those that feel within themselves the sweetness of joy.” 

This suggests that the lack of any stronger expression was regarded positively. Le Brun’s work went on to declare that it was possible to judge the moral character of a person based on the way they expressed their passions.  

Le Brun was, like many other 17th-century thinkers of the time, interested in rationalising, ordering and explaining the world around him. By giving names and definitions to subjective human experiences, they set in motion the deeply rooted concept of human expression as universal, and position these expressions within a hierarchy of good and bad, a system which we are still grappling with to this day. 

Amalia Pica is a London-based Argentinian artist. She explores metaphor, communication and civic participation through sculptures, installations, photographs, projections, live performances and drawings. Her exhibitions, commissions and residencies include Fondazione Memmo, Venice Biennale (Italy), Museum Haus Konstruktiv (Switzerland), Tate Modern and Herald St (UK), Proyectos Ultravioleta (Guatemala), Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (Australia), Yorkshire Sculpture Park (UK) and Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, (USA). Her works are in public collections in several institutions, including Tate (UK), Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim (New York, USA), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes Neuquén, (Argentina) and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (USA). 

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Amalia Pica

Artist Amalia Pica describes her interest in the connection between acts of celebration and protest and her work ‘Procession for Eighteen’.

Amalia Pica describes her installation

Amalia Pica describes her installation by Wellcome Collection

Leaning against the wall there is a line of 15 placards that snake around the corner. Each placard is a little bit different from the others; they’re made from material ranging from wood plastic cardboard and fabric. On the placards there are brightly coloured triangles that, when placed together in a line, simulate a string of paper bunting. These are flags that are usually used for street parties or celebrations.

Facing the placards is a TV screen showing documentation of a performance that we did with 18 participants. They carried the placards to the university campus located behind the Wellcome Collection. In the video you can see the participants holding up the placards in different formations, such as lines and circles, so that the bunting can form a pattern. Throughout the exhibition one person will periodically pick up one of the placards and parade around the building unannounced.

Lynne Segal is Emeritus Anniversary Professor at Birkbeck, University of London, in Psychosocial Studies. She has written widely on feminism, sexuality, masculinity, identity and collectivity. Her books include ‘Is the Future Female? Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism’; ‘Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men’; ‘Straight Sex: The Politics of Pleasure’; ‘Why Feminism? Gender, Psychology & Politics’; ‘Making Trouble: Life & Politics’; ‘Out of Time: The Pleasures & Perils of Ageing’; ‘Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy’, addressing what remains after the commodification of happiness and wellbeing. She recently published ‘The Care Manifesto’, as part the Care Collective, addressing the politics of care.

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Lynne Segal

Writer and activist Lynne Segal discusses how radical collective joy brings us together and breaks down the barriers between individuals.

Lynne Segal talks about collective joy

Lynne Segal talks about collective joy by Wellcome Collection

There is so much official talk (and number crunching) about happiness and well-eing nowadays. But where is joy? Unlike happiness, joy is a word we don’t use much today. We may discern it, perhaps hovering on the horizon of possibilities, if often in events we feel we are missing out on.

For what is distinctive about joy, as I argue in my book ‘Radical Happiness’, is that it can break down distances between people, bringing us together – at least with those able to share the same delight. This explains joy’s traditional ties with something we feel is larger than ourselves, perhaps our teams winning at football, or other collective excitements. It’s a moment when we can escape that gloomy tyrant – ourselves – so often brooding over our own shortcomings or sense of isolation.

The father of sociology, Émile Durkheim, noted the role of public festivals in affirming community belonging, generating forms of “collective effervescence”. This was exactly the shared joy that other father of sociology, Max Weber, saw as disappearing with the advent of capitalism, forever at odds with its dour individualising principles – and never more so than now, when it’s ever harder to escape that never-ending project of self-improvement.

Yet escape we sometimes do, though such shared joy is more often evident in places with their own competitive and commercial formula – from football terraces to Glastonbury – hence reserved for those who can afford them. But there are other moments, all the more empowering when we feel some sense of agency in bringing them about, especially in joyful political engagement.

Look at the exuberant faces routinely present in festivals of resistance. They may be confronting the most challenging situations, but the utopian yearning they express cheers the soul and, above all, is often when we feel most alive, most attached to the world, and to each other. These are the moments of radical happiness when we experience collective joy.

Raymond Antrobus is a British poet and educator. His work includes the books ‘To Sweeten Bitter’ (Out-Spoken Press, 2017), ‘The Perseverance’ (Penned In The Margins/Tin House, 2018), ‘All the Names Given’ (Picador/Tin House, 2021) and children’s picture book ‘Can Bears Ski?’ (Walker Books/Candlewick). In 2020 Raymond was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 2019 he became the first ever poet to be awarded the Rathbone Folio Prize for best work of literature in any genre. Other awards include the Ted Hughes Award, PBS Winter Choice, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2019, Somerset Maugham Award and the Guardian Poetry Book Of The Year 2018.

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Raymond Antrobus

Poet Raymond Antrobus talks about the relationship between joy and woe and reads his poem ‘I Want the Confidence of’.

Raymond Antrobus reads a poem

Raymond Antrobus reads a poem by Wellcome Collection

When I think about this idea of happiness and pain and how one can't exist without the other, I think about the poet Kahlil Gibran, who has a poem called ‘On Joy and Sorrow’ and the opening line he says, “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.”

And he goes on to build this kind of comparison between how joy and sorrow, if they don't exist, if you don't make space for both of them to exist in your life, it's not possible to live fully. When I thought about what poem of mine would I choose to read in relation to this, I thought of ‘I Want the Confidence of’, which is in ‘The Perseverance’, because I think it's a poem which, in a way, acknowledges both of those things.

Everything that's happening within the poem, the movement, is almost, kind of is, acknowledging a kind of darker, harsher reality that's underneath all of the exuberance that's in it. So I'm going to read this poem, ‘I Want the Confidence of’. I hope you enjoy it.

Salvador Dali in a 1950s McDonald’s advert, 

on shantytown dapper dandies, of Cuba Gooding Jr

in a strip club shouting SHOW ME THE MONEY,

of the woman on her phone in a quiet coach,

that no one will cross the road when they see you,

the sun shining through the gaps in the buildings,

a polite pint and a cheeky cigarette, tattoos

on the arms, rains that blur the whole city without delay.

I want the confidence of a coffee bean in the body,

I want to be fluent in confidence so large it speaks from its own sky.

At the airport I want my confidence to board

without investigations, to sit in foreign cafés

without a silver spoon in a teacup clinking

into sunken places, of someone named after a saint,

of Matthew the deaf footballer who couldn't hear

to pass the ball, but still ran the pitch,

of hot combs, rollin’ roadmen and rubber. 

it has to mean helium balloons in any shape or colour,

my sister leaving home for university, my finally sober father,

There is such a thing as a key confidently cut

Call it a boy busking on the canal path singing

Russell Foster CBE, FRS is the Head of Oxford’s Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology, the founding Director of the Sleep and Circadian Research Institute (SCNi) and is a Fellow of Brasenose College Oxford. His research addresses how circadian rhythms and sleep are generated and regulated and what happens when these systems fail because of societal pressures, ageing and disease. A key finding has been the discovery and characterisation of an unrecognised light-detecting system within the eye that regulates circadian rhythms and sleep. For his work, Russell was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and was honoured by being appointed as a CBE for services to science. He has been a member of the Governing Council of the Royal Society and he established and led for six years the Royal Society Public Engagement Committee. He is also a Trustee of the Science Museum Group. Russell has published over 270 scientific papers and has received multiple national and international awards. He has also written four popular science books and will publish his fifth in March 2022.

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Russell Foster

Russell Foster, Head of Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology and the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford, discusses the impact of sunlight and vitamin D on our immune system and mental health.

Russell Foster talks about sunlight and health

Russell Foster talks about sunlight and health by Wellcome Collection

The environment exposes our bodies to an endless stream of sounds, smells, tastes, physical contact, heat and, of course, sunlight. We use the energy from sunlight to synthesise vitamin D in our skin. Vitamin D is really important, as it helps us build strong and healthy bones. But it’s also involved in how we respond to infection, the growth of new cells, muscle contraction and metabolism, and most recently, low levels of vitamin D in the blood have been linked to depression.

But sunlight provides us with so much more than just vitamin D. We sense light not through our skin, but by using our eyes, and a layer of cells in the eye called the retina. The rods and cones of the retina act as light detectors or photoreceptors, and the light reflected from objects in our environment allows us to build an image of our world – and we call this “vision”.

In addition to providing us with vitamin D and our sense of vision, sunlight also provides us with a sense of time. Each of us has an internal biological clock which we use to wake us up or send us to sleep, and to prepare our bodies generally for the different demands of activity during the day and sleep at night.

These 24-hour biological rhythms are called “circadian rhythms”, and they need to be adjusted each day to the daily cycle of sunrise and sunset.  And it’s the same for jet lag. When we fly across multiple time zones and suffer jet lag, we eventually recover from jet lag because sunlight at dawn and dusk resets our circadian rhythms to the new time zone. Sunrise and sunset is detected by the eye, but not by the visual cells – the rods and cones. There is another, recently discovered, light-sensing cell in the eye called a “photosensitive retinal ganglion cell”.

Without this daily resetting, our circadian rhythms would drift out of synchrony with the 24-hour day, and this mismatch leads to multiple health problems, including depression and, in some vulnerable individuals, severe mental illness.

Co-curator Laurie Britton Newell describes illustrations within this medieval folding almanac, which would have been used to help treat patients in relation to lunar and solar calendars.

Laurie Britton Newell describes the folding almanac

Laurie Britton Newell describes the folding almanac by Wellcome Collection

We’re looking at one of the rarest and most precious objects in the Wellcome’s collection. It’s a folding almanac from the 15th century.

It was designed to be a portable object that would have been attached to a medical practitioner’s belt and carried around to help them diagnose patients. This almanac’s condition and exquisite detail show that it was a highly valuable object and was, possibly, never even used.

When closed, the rectangular almanac fits in the palm of your hand. It is covered in an embroidered binding made of green-and-pink silk. When opened, it unfolds like a map and shows astrological tables with lunar and solar eclipses, and diagrams.

On the unfolded page small circular diagrams show the lunar and solar eclipses dating between 1384 and 1462. They have been written in brown and gold and red ink, and at the centre of each one the sun or moon’s phases have been illustrated. On the other side of this page is an illustration of the zodiac man.

In the medieval period the cosmos played an important role in the understanding of human health. Astrology and medicine were taught in parallel in universities. Medical treatment often began with enquiries about exactly when the patient fell ill, at what time in relation to the lunar or solar cycles. An almanac such as this would have helped a practitioner prescribe the best treatment for a patient.

At this time the body was believed to be composed of four humours that corresponded to the four elements of the universe. It was believed these humours had to be kept in balance with the cosmos in order to stay mentally and physically healthy.

While our understanding of healthcare has changed over the centuries, the connections between our body and our surroundings still resonate powerfully today.

Morten L Kringelbach is Professor of Neuroscience at Aarhus University (Denmark) and University of Oxford (UK). Morten is interested in understanding hedonia (pleasure) and eudaimonia (the life well-lived), and uses advanced neuroimaging, neurosurgical and computational methods to understand brain function, together with his Hedonia Research Group. He is also a Fellow of the Queen’s College and member of the advisory board for Scientific American and the Empathy Museum. His publication work includes 14 books, and over 300 scientific papers and articles.

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Morten L Kringelbach

Morten L Kringelbach, Professor of Neuroscience, Aarhus University, Denmark, and the University of Oxford, UK, talks about pleasure cycles in the brain.

Morten Kringelbach talks about pleasure and the brain

Morten Kringelbach talks about pleasure and the brain by Wellcome Collection

Dance and music are found in all cultures and are often a great source of joy and happiness; they are intimately linked. But how do they affect our brains and mental states?

Pleasure is central to a life well-lived; the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle proposed the distinction between hedonia – or pleasure – and eudaimonia, perhaps best translated as flourishing or meaningful pleasure.

A life without pleasure – anhedonia – seems meaningless to many.

But how to measure such seemingly vague concepts as ‘pleasure’ and ‘flourishing’? For a long time, many thought these ideas could not be measured by science, but over the last 20 years, with the advance in brain science, we have begun to better understand the underlying brain mechanisms.

Pleasure comes in repeated cycles with different phases of wanting, liking, and satisfaction or satiety.

Different brain networks and neurotransmitters change their involvement in the complex choreography of pleasure. The same brain region can play a very different role in different phases, depending on its involvement with other regions and the facilitation of this communication by dopamine in the wanting phase, and opiates in the liking phase.

And we are now able to manipulate the pleasure circuitry such that we can, for example, turn up and down pleasure reactions like a dimmer switch.

But one thing is simple pleasures such as chocolate, but what about meaningful pleasures such as dance and music? These are both simple pleasures but also deeply meaningful.

We know that eudamonia, wellbeing or flourishing, depends on the fundamental machinery of pleasure. Anhedonia, or the complete lack of pleasure, is a key feature of mental illness.

Brain scanning of people enjoying music and social interactions is helping us to begin to map these elusive states of meaningful pleasure, but much exciting research remains. What is abundantly clear is that one route to flourishing is for our brain and body to engage in dance and music with other people.

In fact, it’s been suggested that one route to happiness is Scottish dancing and a “wee dram”.

Co-curator George Vasey describes the pleasure of sharing a meal, illuminated in the cookbook designed by the nun and graphic designer Sister Corita Kent in 1963.

George Vasey describes Sister Corita Kent’s cookbook

George Vasey describes Sister Corita Kent’s cookbook by Wellcome Collection

A black slipcase has been opened to reveal ten pamphlets with colourful front covers. Each includes recipes from countries including Japan, Germany, India, Greece and Spain, and they were published in the 1960s by a food company to use as a promotional tool.

Alongside the health benefits of a good diet, food has been central to the ways in which people socialise throughout history and for many, sharing food is one of life’s great pleasures.

Each cover in this slipcase has a proverb or quotation in a handwriting-like typeface that speaks to the joyful act of eating and cooking. These include a Japanese proverb that says: “Food must feast the eyes as well as the stomach” and the French saying, “To invite anyone to dine implies that we charge ourselves with his happiness all the time he is under our roof.”

Each pamphlet is printed with bold, painterly marks, with vibrant colours such as purple, sky blue, orange, yellow and ochre. The design, colour and typography suggest a joyous emotional state. This approach was typical of the object’s art director, the nun, activist and designer Sister Corita Kent, who was known for her use of uplifting slogans and bright colours to spread the message of positivity, community and spiritualism.

Chrystel Lebas is a French visual artist based in London. Interested in looking at how landscapes contain psychological significance in relation to visually concealed histories, Chrystel uses photography and the moving image to address a wider understanding of the complex encounter between humans and nature. She has exhibited internationally, and her work is in private and public collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) and the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris). Her publications include ‘Field Studies: Walking through Landscapes and Archives’ (2017), winner of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Best Photography Book 2018.  

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Chrystel Lebas

Photographer Chrystel Lebas talks about photographing some of the oldest trees in the world, her experiences of awe and serenity at being in these ancient landscapes, and her attempts to translate that feeling into the gallery.

Joy and Tranquillity digital guide

Thomas Dixon talks about emotions

Laurie Britton Newell describes ‘Joy with Tranquillity’

Jasleen Kaur describes her installation

Rumya Putcha talks about the word namaste and yoga

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo talks about contentment

Laurie Britton Newell describes Octavia E. Butler’s notes

Russell Foster talks about sunlight and health

Laurie Britton Newell describes the folding almanac

Chrystel Lebas describes her installation

Raymond Antrobus reads a poem

George Vasey describes ‘Athenians Celebrate Bacchus’

Morten Kringelbach talks about pleasure and the brain

Sarah Garfinkel talks about optimism and the heart

Vivienne Lo describes the ‘San-ts’ai t’u-hui’

Robin Dunbar talks about social connection and wellbeing

George Vasey describes Sister Corita Kent’s cookbook

Lynne Segal talks about collective joy

George Vasey describes the ‘Smiley Face Protest’

Amalia Pica describes her installation

Joshua Virasami talks about joy and protest

Joy and Tranquillity digital guide

Thomas Dixon talks about emotions

Laurie Britton Newell describes ‘Joy with Tranquillity’

Jasleen Kaur describes her installation

Rumya Putcha talks about the word namaste and yoga

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo talks about contentment

Laurie Britton Newell describes Octavia E. Butler’s notes

Russell Foster talks about sunlight and health

Laurie Britton Newell describes the folding almanac

Chrystel Lebas describes her installation

Raymond Antrobus reads a poem

George Vasey describes ‘Athenians Celebrate Bacchus’

Morten Kringelbach talks about pleasure and the brain

Sarah Garfinkel talks about optimism and the heart

Vivienne Lo describes the ‘San-ts’ai t’u-hui’

Robin Dunbar talks about social connection and wellbeing

George Vasey describes Sister Corita Kent’s cookbook

Lynne Segal talks about collective joy

George Vasey describes the ‘Smiley Face Protest’

Amalia Pica describes her installation

Joshua Virasami talks about joy and protest

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Vivienne Lo describes the ‘San-ts’ai t’u-hui’