Health Benefits of Meditation

 Ellen McAuliffe Ott is the top executive of Feels Like Home Properties, LLC, located in Southport, North Carolina. As president of the company, Ellen McAuliffe Ott is responsible for managing, renting, and reselling properties. One of her hobbies is meditation.

Meditation boosts the health and well-being of a person. It helps focus the mind on the present and control breath, which helps in reducing stress and anxiety. In combination with medication, meditation can help treat pain conditions such as chronic pain, headaches, and osteoarthritis. It can provide long-term remedies for these health conditions. Meditation can also help reduce migraine, hypertension, depression, and stress-related health conditions like high blood pressure.

Practicing meditation on a regular basis can considerably reduce severe symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome in women. It also helps relieve the anxiety associated with irritable bowel syndrome and, to a large extent, improves life quality.

Kirtan Kriya, an ancient meditation practice, can help improve focus and concentration by chanting a mantra with some finger movements. People with dementia can benefit from this meditation practice. Along with stress, meditation can help with age-related memory retention and memory loss problems. Encouraging older people to practice meditation can help them fight cognitive dysfunctions.

Substance abuse can lead to serious health problems and requires strong self-control to eliminate the addiction. Meditation can improve self-control and instill discipline, which helps reduce substance dependence. With meditation, a person can control impulses and fight withdrawal symptoms to overcome substance dependence.

Mountain Bike Shoes and Road Bike Shoes

 Ellen McAuliffe Ott is the president of Feels Like Home Properties, LLC in Southport, North Carolina. At the company, Ellen McAuliffe Ott coordinates the purchasing of condos, which are renovated and redesigned for short or long-term rentals. In her free time, she enjoys biking.

Regular biking rides are an excellent way to keep fit and maintain an active lifestyle. However, when a rider peddles the bike regularly, it can cause injuries to the foot. The right biking shoes can make riding comfortable, and the wrong ones can create slight problems like numbness in the foot. Depending on the terrain, riders wear different shoes like mountain bike shoes or road bike shoes.

Mountain bike shoes are more flexible than road bike shoes. Bikers sometimes have to walk up on steep mountain roads when riding on mountainous terrain. Keeping this in mind, manufacturers made the shoe's sole less firm. This makes it comfortable for walking. The rubber soles can firmly grip the ground and prevent skidding or falling. Two soles are stitched together to make the sole so that the shoes don't protrude.

Road bike shoes are more rigid than mountain bike shoes because the manufacturers only designed them for cycling purposes. Due to this rigidity, a biker can exert full force from the foot to the pedal. Plastic or carbon material is used to make the sole. The cleats don't get sunk into the shoes, making walking relatively difficult. The shoes are suitable for cyclists participating in bike racing competitions that don't require trekking or traveling.

Travel and Fair Rental Policies

Since its establishment in 2007, Airbnb has since seen 4 million hosts welcome more than a billion guests to their homes. Operating in 220 countries and regions, the company helps residents and businesses reap the benefits of tourism, generating billions of dollars for hosts.

In addition to injecting money into local economies, Airbnb collaborates with local governments to promote travel that best serves communities. Currently, the company operates in more than 100,000 cities globally. Cooperation with local governments is vital in creating meaningful short-term rental legislation that protects locals’ right to share their homes and earn income while simultaneously benefiting communities.

In the United States and Canada, Airbnb has developed hundreds of partnerships, tax collection agreements, and data-sharing policies that balance community and host needs. This collaborative approach includes the collection and remission of taxes. From 2015 to 2022, Airbnb collected more than $1.5 billion in taxes in the US and Canada and more than $4 billion globally. This tax money has funded vital local services and proven particularly beneficial in recovering from the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2020, the company launched the city portal to share data with governments and tourism organizations worldwide. The innovative resource utilizes locally specific data and helpful tools to enhance local organizations’ collaboration with Airbnb. Currently, the company maintains more than 160 city portal partnerships.

The tourism industry suffered substantial losses during the pandemic. Airbnb supports economic recovery through partnerships with governments, non-profit organizations, and destination marketing organizations. With targeted marketing to encourage safe travel, Airbnb enhances economic growth for communities that depend on tourism. The company has created more than 140 partnerships with destination marketing organizations, 40 of them in Canada and the US.

In 2022 and beyond, Airbnb aims to expand hosting opportunities to even more communities, particularly those outside traditional travel hubs. For example, the company builds partnerships to support hosting in rural areas through a collaboration with Visit North Carolina and the North Carolina Department of Commerce. The year-long “Dream Big in Small Town NC” campaign will promote travel to 16 rural North Carolina counties, aiding the post-pandemic recovery of numerous local shops and restaurants.

In another partnership, Airbnb and the New Communities Land Trust collaborate to encourage travel to Black-owned farms in Georgia. The Southwest Georgia Agri-Tourism Trail is a collection of experiences and stays founded by USDA Equity Commissioner Shirley Sherrod. Through this initiative, local farmers host travelers while raising social awareness about the unique needs and accomplishments of Black farming communities.

In addition to supporting tourism and economic recovery, Airbnb advocates for short-term rental regulations that protect hosts and communities. In Atlanta, for example, the company maintains contact with city leaders working to create safe, fair housing rules. The goal is to ensure the responsible implementation of short-term rental policies and the regulatory oversight that keep hosts and guests safe.

In Toronto, Airbnb recently became a licensed rental platform. The company established a city portal to share data with the city and has delivered more than $5 million in municipal accommodation tax (MAT) to the city. This money directly funds programs and services that benefit residents and visitors. For example, Toronto officials have designated these funds for the repair of roads and transit systems, cultural enhancement, and parks and recreation.

Airbnb will continue to support governments worldwide in establishing fair regulations for short-term rentals, in addition to supporting responsible travel and helping more communities reap the financial benefits of home sharing.

Interest in Board Games and Benefits

Many born in the mid to late-20th century remember when playing board games was a popular pastime. With the rapid growth of digital technologies and gaming, though, sitting around the table and playing Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly, Sorry!, or any of the other numerous board games may seem outdated, especially with the growth of online gaming. Surprisingly, even in the middle of a gaming renaissance, the board game has evolved and adapted to the changing times.

Playing board games has a number of advantages for those who engage in this activity. The pandemic was a catalyst for an increase in board game sales. A December 2016 CNBC article reported that global sales of board games and puzzles grew from $9.3 billion in 2013 to just $9.6 billion in 2016.

The same article reported this modest increase in interest was due to Euro Style board games such as The Settlers of Catan, a German board game popularized in the states and Europe. Cooperation and strategy are key features of Euro Style games, and in the case of The Settlers of Catan, players must trade to acquire resources on an island they colonize, which requires players to compromise. Incidentally, one of the reasons that Euro Style games have grown in popularity is because of this emphasis on cooperation and negotiation, as opposed to competition and conflict.

Board games experienced another surge in popularity during the quarantine, when everyone was required to remain indoors. According to a December 2020 Today article published online, game company Hasbro reported a 20 percent jump in sales during the third quarter of 2020 over the same quarter of 2019. Some of the more popular sellers were Monopoly, Jenga, Operation, Life, Sorry, and Connect 4.

Mattel is another game company that saw an increase in board game sales. As of December 2020, the company reported a 48 percent increase in sales compared with the same month the year before. Top sellers that year were its flagship game UNO, Apples to Apples, Pictionary, Phase 10, and Blakus, with UNO experiencing growth nine quarters in a row.

Interest in board games has lasted well beyond the onset of the pandemic. Moreover, some experts project that the industry will be worth $21.56 billion by 2025, with this jump representing global growth.

This growth might have a lot to do with the proliferation of online and offline board game communities. Online forums and groups on social media and sites such as BoardGameGeek serve as an outlet for people to talk about the different types of board games available and to share their own ideas and strategies about playing them.

Then, there are the conventions such as PAX Unplugged and Gen Con where board gamers can play new board games, meet designers, and compete in tournaments, among other activities. Finally, Kickstarter, a platform for launching projects, has served as a platform for launching new board games, with one game, The Witcher: Old World, raising $2.6 million in funding in one day.

Interest in these games in the last few years has to do with more than just finding a way to pass the time. In fact, playing board games holds a host of benefits. For example, it is a way to unplug from a very digital world.

Playing a board game requires the interaction of at least one person, providing players with the opportunity to connect with one another socially. While everyone is around the table playing, they are talking with one another and laughing, which is conducive to reducing stress.

Finally, while perhaps not a reason for playing for most people, board games offer cognitive benefits for participants. Board games force players, regardless of age, to use higher-level thinking skills to make decisions and solve problems, helping to keep their brains in shape.