Month: November 2014

Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia – A Valuable, and Free, Online Report

What would happen if a team of highly qualified psychologists joined up with a team of people who knew psychosis from the inside, from their own journey into madness and then recovery - and if they collaborated in writing a guide to understanding the difficult states that get names like "psychosis" and schizophrenia"? Well, you don't have to wonder anymore, because the result was just published a couple of days ago in the form of a report that is free to download at Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia … [click on title to read and view more]

What is it like to be a bee?

by PAUL WOODWARD In the minds of many humans, empathy is the signature of humanity and yet if this empathy extends further and includes non-humans we may be suspected of indulging in anthropomorphism — a sentimental projection of our own feelings into places where similar feelings supposedly cannot exist. But the concept of anthropomorphism is itself a strange idea since it seems to invalidate what should be one of the most basic assumptions we can reasonably make about living creatures: that without the capacity to suffer, nothing would survive. … [click on title to read and view more]

smart humans… big brains and opposable thumbs…

Julia Roberts, Harrison Ford, Kevin Spacey, Edward Norton, Penélope Cruz, Robert Redford and Ian Somerhalder all join forces to give nature a voice. Watch the films and take action … [click on title for the rest of the post]

We Are from the Future — Next Stage: Revolution of Love

I see you. You are not alone. We are in this together. That line is from the below video. Thanks to my friend, Lauren Worsh who shared this video with me and said this in response to the conversation we had: "There’s a lot I really like about this video, but one thing that I’m appreciating right now is how simply it states that a fear-filled populace and opportunistic, corrupt governments co-arise, give birth to each other, require each other. Reconciles that Us vs. Them into the unity it is, and invites acknowledgment of our power and responsibility, without denying institutionalized corruption and treachery" … [click on title to read and view more]

A good day to consider a practice of gratefulness

Practicing gratitude came upon me as a form of grace. It was not something that made a whole lot of sense to me during the darkest times of illness. No, gratitude did not come easy from that darkest of dark nights and yet the little there was I clung to for dear life (quite literally). For me the bearers of this gift were my cats. While there was nothing else I could find any consistent source of comfort from, I could find it from my cats. For that, I was profoundly grateful and because I had that gift my practice of gratitude began. ... I want to suggest and even underscore that practicing gratefulness does not entail denying the difficulty of our lives. I think it's equally important to honor and embrace our pain and anger and hurt. If we are feeling those things we need to approve of and love the parts of us that feel all those things. That does not negate also being grateful for that which we can be grateful for. So many times when things like gratefulness or forgiveness or other virtues are considered the message is that we should not feel all the bad stuff. I say that's crap. Feel it all...the bad and the good. Feel grateful and angry. It's all good and necessary. … [click on title to read and view more]

Holding on to beliefs limits our experience of life

One of my practices is to not attach to beliefs. We really know very little. What is true most often depends on context and interpretation. Both of which are always changing and differ from person to person. What is right for me may not be right for you. What is right for me today may not be what I need tomorrow. Practicing non-attachment to belief and also being aware of when perhaps I'm not able to do this has opened up my world in lovely ways. Fixation is stagnation. Dogma is a fixation of belief. Healing and resiliency, I've found, require a lack of fixation...a sort of fluidity of spirit and intention. It is from this place that much of my healing comes. … [click on title to read and view more]

Expansion and contraction

Today I'm very grateful for Shinzen Young. I woke with very contracted energy this morning and felt pretty distressed. I thought about how my energy contracts and expands a whole lot. When I thought about that I remembered that Shinzen Young's youtube channel is called "expandcontract." So I ventured over to his channel and found this dharma talk which was just exactly what I needed. Yes, guidance leads me to what I need pretty much always now. Guidance is showing me how to heal myself. … [click on title to read and view more]

Trauma can potentially impact the body and mind for life

Van der Kolk draws on 30 years of experience to argue powerfully that trauma is one of the West's most urgent public health issues. The list of its effects is long: on mental and physical health, employment, education, crime, relationships, domestic or family abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction. "We all want to live in a world that is safe, manageable... predictable, and victims remind us that this is not always the case," says van der Kolk. When no one wants to hear about a person's trauma, it finds a way to manifest in their body. … [click on title to read and view more]

Going Deeper Into “Madness” with ISPS: Anticipating the International Dialogue in NYC 2015

As awareness spreads about there being something wrong with existing approaches to “psychosis” aka “madness,” interest grows in exploring what to do instead...This conference promises to stand out in terms of the variety of voices, perspectives, approaches and traditions that it will bring together to focus on the deeper issue of how helpers can best understand and interact with those experiencing what is called psychosis. … [click on title to read and view more]

‘Borderline Personality Disorder’, the Failure of Psychiatry and Emergence

By Jacqueline Gunn, PsyD and Brent Potter, PhD This work stands out as distinct from all other books written on ‘borderline personality disorder’ and other so-called psychiatric diseases. We do not assume that BPD is what is outlined in the DSM and the literature on psychopathology. At no time do we refer to it as a diagnosis or psychiatric disease. This is why you will repeatedly see ‘borderline personality disorder’ in single quotation marks. It isn’t a thing, like a disorder residing solely in the brain organ of an individual. An individual only takes up possibilities disclosed to him or her by the cultural-historical environment. To say otherwise would be to say that the individual creates them out of nothing which, of course, would be absurd. Since distressing states of mind are variations of common human experience, they are expressed in typical ways. For these reasons, we do not consider ‘borderline personality disorder’ in a decontextualized fashion. … [click on title to read and view more]

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