Our understanding of how heart function affects mental and emotional well-being has been advanced by leaps and bounds thanks to the Institute of HeartMath (IHM). Studies conducted by this pathbreaking research organization show that signals sent from the heart to the brain via the nervous system dramatically affect how we think and feel. As the IHM notes, “These heart signals…
Recently I interviewed neuropsychologist Rick Hanson about his specialty: hardwiring happiness. Using neurological techniques, Hanson says, you can change the structure of your brain by building neuropathways for feeling good. “When it comes to negative experiences, your brain is like Velcro,” he said. “With positive experiences, the brain is like Teflon.” He went on to explain that for survival purposes,…
I proposed, and the next week we eloped, charging forward as man and wife. After 14 months of courtship, I thought I knew everything about her. But one evening my lovely bride disclosed that during a rebellious moment while I was away, she’d started “puffing vapor” to blow off some steam. I saw her pull out the cigar-sized device and,…
We live in a time when we tend to look so far ahead into the future that we may lose sight of what’s going on in our lives at the moment. I know I used to find myself running so far and so fast that I missed an entire year here and there. All that changed when I began meditating.…
Music is now a government-endorsed painkiller. This is not to say the Food and Drug Administration has approved rock, jazz, or hip-hop MP3 downloads as over-the-counter analgesics. But stretching beyond the labels of “alternative” or “complementary” healing techniques, music and sound have been studied and applied to patients in recent years in well-funded federal labs with impressive and verifiable results.…
Recently I took my mother to see tap star Savion Glover at our local performing arts center. The hall was packed, mostly with children whose parents had brought them to see the legendary dancer. Predominant in the crowd were students from inner-city performing arts schools. During intermission my mother and I went to the concession stand, where candy was on…
Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, was named Piyush by his Indian immigrant parents and raised as a Hindu. His conversion to Christianity, he told an interviewer from Christianity Today, took seven years. It began when his grandfather died and he turned to books for insights into the mysteries of life and death—first the Bible, then the writings of…
