Riding for Health and for Pleasure: A Brief Historical Overview with Reference to Latvia in the Baltic Region

Throughout premodern history, horses were used primarily for labour and transportation, as well as in the military sphere. With the advent of motorized vehicles and other means of transport, the emphasis shifted to using horses in sport as well as for leisure. This article begins by examining briefly the few pre-modern European sources that mention riding as health-promoting and pleasurable activity, continues with a discussion of the more numerous and detailed references to the benefits of riding in the eighteenth and nineteenth-century sources and concludes with an overview of the rise of riding therapy and recreational riding in Germany and the Baltics in the twentieth century.

Gendering the history of cinemagoing in Izmir, Turkey: Middle-class women’s experiences of cinema in the 1960s and 1970s

This article focuses on cinemagoing in Izmir (the third largest city in Turkey) in the 1960s and the 1970s, when the city developed a vibrant cinema culture with its numerous winter and summer cinemas. It attempts to undo the problematic conceptions of homogeneous audiences and cinemagoing experiences by focusing on how gender shaped and constructed the experiences of middle-class audiences. The primary source material for the article is qualitative data obtained from 62 oral history interviews, in addition to the contents of local newspapers and film industry magazines. The article argues that although, for women, cinemagoing was a very meaningful event in itself, it was not a wholly free and easily pleasurable activity. It also suggests that women, like men, went to the cinema to see a variety of films more than they went to socialize, and their choice of films was not limited to supposedly women’s genres. Overall, the article attempts to break with the nostalgic tone in popular and academic discussions of cinemagoing in Izmir and other cities in Turkey. It shows that cinema in Izmir, and possibly elsewhere in Turkey, was not just a forum of collective entertainment and pleasure, but also a locus of struggle.

The Semiotic Analysis of Cosmetic Advertisements on Facebook

The cosmetic industry is one of the major industries in the world, and it continually enhances with the current high-technology developments in the sector. Just from the very early ages, young girls have a curiosity about trying their mother’s make-up products and they satisfy their curiosity by doing make-up to their dolls. When girls become young women, they start trying a variety of cosmetic products and they wear make-up in order to look attractive for the opposite sex. Wearing make up helps women to feel content about their physical appearance. It increases the self-confidence of women and makes them happy, as it is a pleasurable activity. The cosmetic industry offers products, which are in abundance according to the taste of each women coming from different ranks in society. It surrounds women with cosmetic advertisements and draw their attention in the fashionable districts of the city, at shopping malls and through certain media tools such as women’s magazines and social media. The cosmetic industry is a part of the consumer culture, and it is also closely related with the ideal feminine beauty. It disseminates messages through advertisements that every woman should use cosmetic products in order to reach the ideal beauty, which is desired. This paper aims to portray how the white ideal beauty is portrayed on the Facebook pages of three cosmetic brands representing different characteristics in terms of class, social status, lifestyle, and aesthetics.

Walking, Body, and The City: Pleasure and The Co-formation of The Self and The City

In Surabaya, as the case of this study, road-based culture has been historically predisposing the way people inhabit the roads. It, then, leads to the ‘acceptance’ of the automobile as the primary mode of mobility. In contrast, there is an emerging youth movement who promotes walking as a way to subvert the current road-based culture and re-invent walking as creative and pleasurable activity as an alternative way of enjoying Surabaya. Through an examination of daily journals, photos, and social media documented by people joining the walking community in Surabaya City, this paper scrutinises the subversive yet creative aspects of walking as an organized activity with a view to generating new insights into the creative potential of walking. In this paper, I argue that the way people experience the world through walking is different to the way people experience the world through automobile travel, and that this generates different versions of, and attachments to, the urban environment of Surabaya.

Veterans’ interests, perceptions, and use of mindfulness

Objective: Mindfulness-based interventions are an evidence-based approach utilized in health care. There is developing evidence for effective use with military Veterans. However, little is known about Veterans’ view of mindfulness. This study aims to understand their interests, perceptions, and use of mindfulness to enhance educational outreach and treatment engagement. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted across the Veterans Health Administration in Salt Lake City, UT by administering a questionnaire to military Veterans. The questionnaire included the following themes: (1) demographics and respondents’ mindfulness practice; (2) respondents’ perceptions and beliefs about mindfulness; and (3) respondents’ knowledge and interest in learning about mindfulness. Results: In all, 185 military Veterans were surveyed; 30% practiced mindfulness in the past year, mainly for stress, posttraumatic stress disorder, sleep, and depression. Over 75% who practiced reported perceived benefit. Veterans rarely reported negative beliefs about mindfulness; 56% perceived an understanding of mindfulness and 46% were aware of Veterans Health Administration mindfulness offerings. In all, 55% were interested in learning about mindfulness, 58% were interested in learning how it could help, and 43% were interested in combining mindfulness with a pleasurable activity. Conclusion: Educational engagement approaches should be directed toward the benefits of mindfulness practice with minimal need to address negative beliefs. Outreach including education, with an experiential component, about mindfulness classes, availability of evening and weekend classes, individual sessions, and virtual offerings into Veteran’s homes, may enhance engagement in mindfulness-based interventions. Mindfulness-based interventions that combine mindfulness training with an experiential pleasurable activity may be one mechanism to enhance treatment engagement.

Flavor Aversion Learning Based on Running: A Review

Wheel running establishes aversion in rats to a flavored solution consumed shortly before the running. Many studies have shown that this is a case of Pavlovian conditioning, in which the flavor and running respectively act as the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (US). The present article introduces some procedural variables of this running-based flavor aversion learning (FAL), including subjects, CS agents, US agents, and drive operations. This article also summarize various behavioral features of Pavlovian conditioning demonstrated in running-based FAL including the law of contiguity despite long-delay learning, extinction and spontaneous recovery, CS-preexposure effect, remote and proximal US-preexposure effects, degraded contingency effect, inhibitory learning by backward conditioning, stimulus overshadowing, associative blocking, and higher-order contextual control. Also reviewed are several hypotheses proposed for the underlying psychophysiological causes of running-based FAL (activation of mesolimbic dopamine system, gastrointestinal discomfort, motion sickness, energy expenditure, general stress, and anticipatory contrast). At the end of the article, we visit the question of most general interest about running-based FAL: why pleasurable activity of voluntary running yields aversive learning in rats.

Many splendored things: Sexuality, playfulness and play

This article makes a theoretical argument for the productivity of the notions of playfulness and play in feminist and queer studies of sexuality. Defined as a mode of sensory openness and drive towards improvisation, playfulness can be seen as central to a range of sexual activities from fumbling, random motions to elaborate, rehearsed scenarios. Play in the realm of sexuality involves experimentations with what bodies can feel and do. As pleasurable activity practised for its own sake, play involves the exploration of different bodily capacities, appetites, orientations and connections. Understood in this vein, play is not the opposite of seriousness or simply synonymous with fun. Driven by the quest for bodily pleasure, play may just as well be strained, dark and hurtful in the forms that it takes and the sensory intensities that it engenders. This article argues that the mode of playfulness and acts of play allow for pushing previously perceived and imagined horizons of embodied potentiality in terms of sexual routines and identifications alike. It examines the productive avenues that the notions of playfulness and play open up in conceptualising the urgency of sexual pleasures, the contingency of desires and their congealment in categories of identity.

A permanência de crianças e jovens nos esportes: olhares para iniciação e especialização esportiva

A prática de atividades esportivas ocupa um espaço cada vez maior na vida das pessoas, em especial crianças e jovens. Tal prática, quando é devidamente planejada e elaborada, pode gerar inúmeros benefícios aos participantes, como aderência a prática esportiva. Nessa circunstância, o estudo tem por objetivo organizar conteúdos vinculados a Iniciação Esportiva e aos motivos que levam crianças a permanecerem as atividades esportivas, propondo condutas que o professor de Educação Física deve apresentar na Iniciação Esportiva, com olhares para a não Especialização Esportiva Precoce. O estudo caracteriza-se como um ponto de vista, baseado nos diferentes estudos revisados na literatura. A Iniciação Esportiva pode exercer grande influência em crianças e jovens. Esta possui diferentes métodos de ensino-aprendizagem, seu processo é dinâmico, e para realizá-lo é necessário planejamento, fazendo com que a prática seja uma atividade prazerosa. Frente aos motivos, um dos motivos que pode gerar o abandono esportivo é a Especialização Precoce. Outro ponto importante a se destacar é a motivação, a qual depende de fatores extrínsecos, como pais e pais e professores, por exemplo, e intrínsecos, como fazer novas amizades, divertir-se e praticar uma atividade que tem facilidade, por exemplo. Sendo assim, tais fatores influenciam a permanência de crianças e jovens no contexto esportivo. Nesse sentido, o preparo adequado do profissional de Educação Física deve apresentar estruturação profissional adequada, visando adaptar suas aulas ao público infanto-juvenil, de modo a respeitar as especificidades e particularidades de cada fase do desenvolvimento, bem como do interesse do grupo, promovendo aulas mais atraentes, objetivando satisfação dos praticantes. Além disso, a preparação também deve ser composta por características que façam o profissional ser capaz de atender todas as expectativas impostas na Iniciação Esportiva, respeitando, é claro, o processo de pluralidade das competências motoras que devem ser trabalhadas na Iniciação Esportiva.ABSTRACT. The permanence of children and young people in sports: looks for initiation and sports specialization. The practice of sports activities occupies an increasing space in the lives of people, especially children and young people. Such practice, when properly planned and elaborated, always respecting the human development process, can generate numerous benefits to participants, such as adherence to sports practice. In this circumstance, the study aims to organize contents linked to Initiation of Sport and to the reasons that lead children to remain in sports activities, proposing behaviors that the Physical Education teacher should present in the Initiation of Sports, with a view to non-Early Specialization. The study is characterized as descriptive-propositional bibliographical. Sports Initiation can have a great influence on children and young people. It has different teaching-learning methods, its process is dynamic, and in order to do it, planning is necessary, making the practice a pleasurable activity. Faced with the reasons, one of the reasons that can cause the abandonment sport is the Early Specialization. Another important point to emphasize is motivation, which depends on extrinsic factors, such as parents and parents and teachers, for example, and intrinsic ones, such as making new friends, having fun and practicing an activity that has ease, for example. Therefore, these factors influence the permanence of children and young people in the sports context. In this sense, the appropriate preparation of the Physical Education professional must present adequate professional structure, aiming to adapt their classes to the child and youth audience, in order to respect the specificities and particularities of each stage of development, as well as the interest of the group, promoting classes more attractive, aiming the satisfaction of the practitioners. In addition, the preparation should also be composed of characteristics that make the professional to be able to meet all the expectations imposed in the Initiation of Sport, respecting, of course, the process of plurality of motor skills that must be worked on in Initiation Sport.