Text 3 Forgive and forget. Most of us find the forgetting easier, but maybe we should work on the forgiving part. ' Holding on to hurts wears you down physically and emotionally, ' says Stanford U-niversity psychologist Fred Luskin, author of Forgive for Good. 'Forgiving someone can be a pow erful remedy. ' In a recent study, Charlotte van Oyen Witvliet, assistant professor of psychology at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, and colleagues asked 71 volunteers to remember a past hurt. Tests recorded sudden increases in blood pressure, heart rate and muscle tension-the same responses that occur when people are beside themselves. Research has linked temper and heart diseases. When the volunteers were asked to imagine forgiving those who'd wronged them, they remained calm by comparison. What's more, forgiveness can be learned, insists Luskin, director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project. ' We teach people to rewrite their story in their minds, to change from victim to hero. If the hurt .is from a husband's or a wife's unfaithfulness, we might encourage them to think of themselves not only as a person who was cheated on, but as the person who tried to keep the marriage together. 'Two years ago Luskin tested his method on five Northern lrish women whose sons had been murdered. After undergoing a week of forgiveness training, the women's sense of hurt, measured using psychological tests, had fallen by more than half. They were also much less likely to feel depressed and angry. 'Forgiving isn't about regarding what happened as harmless or acceptable, ' says Luskin. 'It is about breaking free of the person who wronged us. ' The early signs that forgiving improves overall health are promisings.