For almost as long as I can remember, bedtime was the time of day when I felt the least sleepy. As a small child, I would read by flashlight or listen to my transistor radio until the small hours of the morning. As a college student, I would stay up all night several times a week. Needless to say, this…
In his bestselling book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell wrote that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to become a master in a particular field. Gladwell based this claim on several studies, including one by German psychologists who researched violinists during the 1990s. The study found that, over their lifetimes, elite violinists averaged 6,000 more hours of practice than non-elite ones.…
One of the first things Lynn asked when she settled into my office for help overcoming post-traumatic stress disorder was, “Can’t we just erase the memories that are making me feel this way?” As a trauma survivor myself, I understood Lynn’s plea. I carry quite a few memories that have made my life miserable at times. Instead of seeking to…
Rewire Me has run dozens of articles on people’s conscious journeys toward healthier, deeper, more spiritually attuned ways of living. I’ve written about religious experiences that are so powerful they seem to spontaneously rewire the whole person, transforming him or her into not just a better person but a completely new one. Such rebirths, I’ve noted, are often marked with…
I used to love listening to my grandmother talk. Raised in Ohio but a Southerner for the bulk of her adult life, she had a quirky accent. When she came to visit us in New York, my younger brother and I would jump onto her bed every morning and demand that she read to us. This gave us more time…
I was hunkered down in a digital workstation at an Arizona longevity clinic, testing a brain training game to figure out do brain training games really work? My mind was in overdrive as my fingers chased elusive flashes of light onscreen. I was playing a shrink’s rethink of the game Fruit Ninja, except that this was a test to determine my…
Some people have a knack for memorizing things. Consider the card counters who play blackjack in Las Vegas. They beat the house by keeping track of played cards and calculating the odds of being dealt a winner from what’s left. This is a minor feat compared to achievements in the USA Memory Championship. In 2013, entrants in this annual competition…
I recently attended Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation, an intensive three-day retreat with a panel of brilliant experts that included scientists, philosophers, and Buddhist thinkers. The conference was held at Upaya Zen Center, nestled in a quiet valley surrounded by mountains in the heart of Santa Fe. Upaya, founded on a vision of Buddhism, is based on the…
