Anna Bowness-Park (picture courtesy of Anna Bowness-Park)

Anna Bowness-Park, writing this week in her Owning Our Health blog in the Vancouver Sun in British Columbia, Canada, looks deeper – much deeper – into lessons on forgiveness from Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban for speaking out about education for girls in Pakistan.

Bowness-Park quotes Rev. Alisdair Smith, Deacon and Business chaplain of Christ Church Cathedral in Vancouver, who said, “We have to learn to forgive ourselves first, and that will make forgiving others easier. ”

She also cites findings of a study by The University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, which discovered that forgiveness in general “is positively associated with better health in terms of the heart, hormones, and immune systems.”

Recommended reading: Owning Our Health – Malala Yousafzai’s lesson on forgiveness.

Video of Malala Yousafzai addressing the United Nations Youth Assembly July 12th: