Tag: health
Measuring Meaning in the New Year
“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.” —Thomas Merton OK, here’s the problem. When I searched the internet for “how to measure meaning,” the first item that popped up (the most popular Yahoo answer) was how to measure your penis. Apparently, a lot of men are still finding the greatest source of meaning in their life to be the size Read More
The Hard Truth of Mental Illness
Crawl into this experience. Feel it. You have a mentally ill brother who has been tormented by his disease for over 50 years. He has suffered from delusions and voices his whole life.
He claims he knows Deep Throat. He is convinced that the FBI has implanted listening devices in his brain and in his teeth. He believes his parents are clones, and he is not sure who is real and who isn’t.
Balance and Unity
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” —Abraham Lincoln, Nov. Read More
Taming Tourette
When I was 30 years old, I was diagnosed as having Tourette syndrome (TS).
It was a huge relief to me to finally have a name for what had been tormenting me since I was about 13 years old. I was also depressed to know that I would be dealing with this neurological disorder for the rest of my life.
Health, Helping and Healing
As I get older, I realize that most problems and opportunities are multi-dimensional. There are many sides to every issue and many layers to every person. Things seem more complex, nuanced, and grey these days…
The Dance
“At the still point of the turning world, there the dance is—and there is only the dance. Yet the enchainment of past and future, woven in the weakness of the changing body, protects mankind from heaven and damnation which flesh cannot endure. Time past and time future—allow but a little consciousness.” –T.S. Elliot Lynnda Pallio vividly describes those wondrous still points in poetic prose in her multiple-award-winning new book, Trusting the Currents. Trusting the Currents Read More
Labels, Limits, and Levels
Dr. Bill Anthony, the highly respected, world-renowned, executive director of the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center at Boston University, initiated classes with new students by throwing the DSM into the waste basket. This dramatic statement was intended to communicate to people entering the mental health field that labels limit our ability to see the potential and possibilities of another human being.
Serenity AND Intensity
There have been a plethora of articles on the independent health effects of meditation and vigorous exercise, but a dearth on the synergistic effects of combining them. In this post, I suggest that maximum effects can be obtained by bracketing or breaking up your day with an hour of intense physical exertion and an hour of complete serenity realized through deep contemplation or meditation. I am offering myself as an N of 1 for this Read More
Development or Deterioration
As I turn 70, I’m sure the first thought that crosses peoples’ minds when they meet me now is, “He’s old!!” Most people associate aging more with accelerated deterioration than continuing development. But I think there is no end point for development. Growth may take a different form or shape, but it doesn’t need to end.
Symptoms or Systems
It’s easy to see the glaring symptoms of a problem and miss the underlying systems that caused the problem in the first place. Let’s take Ferguson as the most recent example. If we look at the situation as an individual problem, we could focus on Michael Brown, Darren Wilson, or Robert McCulloch. Michael Brown was clearly the victim – he was an unarmed man who didn’t deserve to be shot. He was also not a Read More
Wellness
In 1978, when wellness was still a strange term that few people understood, I was hired to direct one of the first hospital based health promotion/wellness programs in the country. Samaritan Health System (SHS, now known as Banner Health), the largest hospital system in Arizona, started this innovative program because health care costs were escalating and consuming a continuously increasing percentage of GDP. The Center for Disease Control had just completed a study showing that Read More
The History of Great Ideas
Great ideas have been piling up in history’s graveyard for 3,000 years. They are left unattended and largely forgotten. When these ideas are first introduced, they are usually met with laudatory excitement and abundant enthusiasm. Then, the ideas are gradually diminished and distorted through this four step process: Trivialization, Bastardization, Privatization, Commercialization