brain

Lifting Depression: A Neuroscientist's Hands-On Approach to Activating Your Brain's Healing Power

admin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

"Depression hurts," chimes the television announcer. Most people have been depressed at some point in their lives, whether from a life-changing event or simply a bad patch of circumstance. I am willing to wager that if you haven’t been there yourself, you know someone who has suffered from depression. The pharmaceutical industry is now doling out pills to treat depression and a large portion of our population is taking them, some with marked results, some going from pill to pill searching for the perfect cocktail that will relieve them of pain and anxiety, fear and restlessness.

In her book Lifting Depression, Kelly Lambert explores the reasons why people born in the middle of the twentieth century are ten times more likely to suffer from major depression compared to people born in the early twentieth century. Why, in our modern day convenience-filled society, do people seem to be so ill at ease? Dr. Lambert is the chair of psychology at Randolph-Macon College and President of the Behavioral Neuroscience Society, and her research has been featured on ABC’s World News Tonight and in Scientific American Mind.

In one experiment she conducted with rats, some had to work hard for rewards while others, dubbed the "trust fund rats," were simply given the treats. After five weeks, the hardworking rats were sixty percent more persistent in trying to work on a new task. She describes this as "learned persistence," and theorizes that coming from our agrarian roots, the human brain receives stimulation from doing concrete tasks like working with our hands, and accomplishing something you can hold as the fruit of your labor, "effort driven rewards."

Lambert's studies find that engaging the effort driven rewards circuit of your brain appears to be equivalent to taking a dose of the most powerful antidepressants. With this in mind, she suggests that something like "behavioral activation therapy" can work to retrain your brain to be happier in the long term. With this form of therapy, a person learns how to alter their behavioral responses to situations and even change their environments to stimulate the brain into feeling more rewarded and therefore relieving the subject of their depression.

Lambert is not advocating the end of pharmaceutical intervention to lift someone out of a lethargic and depressed state. But she maintains that without some other form of therapy, or alteration in activities, a person could simply remain on these drugs, without ever being able to get out of the cycle completely.

Lifting Depression is not only a valuable addition to the field of psychology in an academic sense, but it is also a readable guide book that I would recommend to anyone struggling with depression or seeking to understand how they could offer better guidance to a person who is.

It seems so simple, to engage in exercise, to take up knitting or woodworking as a way to engage the brain in a new rewards program that will assist in finding happiness. But if it is so simple, (and inexpensive!), then why are most people advised by their healthcare providers to just pop the pill and carry on as usual?

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, June 7th 2010

How to Rule the World from Your Couch

admin — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 01:00:00 +0000

By Laura Day

Atria Books

Do you want to make a change in your life? Each December, as one calendar year ends and a new one is about to begin, most of us reflect upon where we have been and plan for where we want to be. If you answer yes to the question I pose, I highly recommend Laura Day's most recent book, How to Rule the World from Your Couch.

This New York Times bestselling author teaches the reader, as she has taught her students, to use intuition as a useful strategy to achieve change in one's life. Day explains intuition as the higher octave of your five senses. Intuition can guide you to your truest, best possible self. Each chapter begins with a Quick Hit Exercise. Her techniques for embodying the skills taught in this book will help you deal with stress, improve personal and professional relationships, and aid you in achieving your goals. Day guides the reader through each chapter by offering examples which are applicable to individual life as well as sharing personal experiences from her life. As Day advises throughout the book, do not over think the exercises. Intuition is a part of each of us. Some may be more aware of the skills of intuition than others. You may discover that you are already practicing these tools but address them by another name. By being an intuitive person, you are harnessing an often underutilized part of your brain.

Day encourages the reader to consciously create a sacred space, which can be a state of mind or a physical place, a sacred time, an actual time which you devote to connecting with your inner being, and a ritual, which is a repetitive and comforting routine that helps you connect with yourself.

By setting aside any preconceived ideas which the chapter titles may invoke, the reader can explore and experiment with the skills of intuition. Mediumship is a chapter on how to view the world by becoming someone or something else. Telepathy is the subject of chapter four, which focuses on the ability to guide the thoughts and behavior of others. At the same time, your own vulnerability can be manipulated by the telepathy of others. Body Heat Telepathy is the ability to exchange mutually attractive messages with another person but from a distance. Intriguing? I thought so.

Do you want to be more in control of your destiny? Chapters six and seven are a must read. Remote Viewing is the most detached of the intuitive states and involves perceiving the target while being separated from it by time and space. Precognition is the ability to move the target, which can be a person or situation forward in time, thus experiencing what will happen.

Each individual is unique and, consequently, each reader will have a personal level of involvement with this book.

Written by: Maryann Gromisch, December 29th 2009

Deeksha: The Fire from Heaven

admin — Thu, 31 May 2007 01:23:00 +0000

By Kiara Windrider

Inner Ocean Publishing

Imparting spiritual advice and spreading the message of a new worldwide movement, Deeksha: The Fire from Heaven offers readers a lot of information. In the first third of the book author Kiara Windrider takes readers on the journey of his personal enlightenment. He describes in great detail what brought him back to his native India, where he studied with the Avatar’s Bhagavan and Amma at the newly founded Oneness University.

The first part of the book reads like a no-frills memoir and ends when Windrider finishes explaining his new path in life. The book continues with shorter stories of other student’s experiences at Oneness University, explanatory passages covering everything from brain chemistry to the Mayan Calendar, and an interview with the Avatar Bhagavan himself.

The book title, Deeksha, refers to person-to-person transfers of energy that according to Windrider and the Deeksha Movement create a neurocircuitry change in the brain. This change allows ego and the sense of a separate self to take the back burner and eventually leave completely. Think of Deekshas as Reiki’s more powerful cousin. This change in the brain allows people to fully realize oneness, the idea that there is no separate self and that we are a part of everything in the universe. This, says Windrider, is what elusive enlightenment is all about.

So does enlightenment mean constant happiness for the rest of your life? Not at all, Windrider concludes. Happiness comes and goes just like all emotions and enlightenment is about not being attached to any of them. I picked up Deeksha: The Fire from Heaven hoping to learn more about the nature of happiness and was awed when the book ended up breaking down many assumptions I had about the emotion itself.

This book challenges the way most of the world looks at everything from religion to global climate chaos. It exposes readers to an important spiritual movement in India that has only just begun to spread westward. While you may not be moved to take the capital “I” out of your writing, this book will give you some tasty thought morsels to ruminate on for months to come. And who knows, maybe they will one day help you to be, in laylady’s terms, More Happy.

Written by: Kaytlyn O'Connor, May 30th 2007