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A wellbeing journey with Víkingur Ólafsson
I recently watched the Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson performing live from his new home in Reykjavík. In that video, Víkingur played three pieces by Bach, Rameau and Debussy, but also talked about the power of music to take us on a journey, to transport us to another place, and to stabilize emotional turmoil especially during times of crisis. Unfortunately, that video is no longer available on YouTube, so I’m sharing today other videos with Víkingur Ólafsson on the piano. The power of music to stabilize emotional turmoil during a crisis As both a musicophile and a Psychiatrist, I am in total agreement with Víkingur Ólafsson. In fact, I have previously…
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Self-isolation, social distancing and wellbeing
I’ve recently written a couple of posts about the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the situation has dramatically changed since then; the number of cases and coronavirus-related deaths has sharply increased around the world. As I am writing this post, the death toll has reached 422 in the UK alone, whereas the total number of confirmed cases is now 8,077 across the country. On a global level, so far we have had 18,251 fatalities and 407,678 confirmed cases. As many countries are now in lockdown (including the UK as of this week), the terms ‘self-isolation’ and ‘social distancing’ have entered our daily vocabulary. In these challenging times, we should not forget our…