Do the aftereffects of traumatic events we suffered as children follow us into adulthood in a physical way? Research about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) proves that enormous childhood stress absolutely leads to increased potential for adult illness and disease. The original Adverse Childhood Experience study (conducted from 1995 to 1997) examined the link between childhood trauma and the likelihood of…
Brent Baum is an important person in my life and a remarkable man. He’s a therapist and a teacher who developed Holographic Memory Resolution (HMR), a method combining meditation, exercise, and emotional reframing techniques to ease the impact of stress and trauma. He defines trauma as “any experience large or small that overwhelms us in our daily existence.” Left unresolved,…
The value of mindfulness for promoting compassion for others and ourselves has drawn a lot of attention in recent years. And few have done more to help people bring self-compassion into their lives than Christopher Germer, Ph.D. A founding member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, Dr. Germer has led countless mindfulness workshops and is the author of one…
By Traci Pedersen Negative ions are anything but negative when it comes to your health. Recent studies suggest that breathing in air that is abundant in negative ions can have a big influence on your feelings of well-being. So, what are negative ions and how do we gain exposure to them? Ions are atoms or molecules that have gained or…
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…
I had the opportunity to speak with the remarkable Gayathri Ramprasad, whose memoir Shadows in the Sun: Healing from Depression and Finding the Light Within (Hazelden)—called a “a cross-cultural lens to mental illness”—was recently published. Her harrowing experiences with depression, the social stigma depression sufferers endure, and her courage in helping herself and others bring a new perspective to an…
Many of us on the Rewire Me staff are what you might call neuroscience nerds. We love digging in to the latest research on the brain and thinking about how it could improve people’s lives. So we couldn’t resist listening in on the presentations at “Neuroscience 2013,” a conference that brought together 30,000 neuroscientists from around the world. Among many…
We’re celebrating our 6-month anniversary with a second look at the most popular articles on the site so far. Check them out and let us know which is your favorite! Rewiring Hate. To a degree, we’re wired to identify enemies and hate them. But to an even greater degree, we’re wired not to hate, to accept ambivalence and embrace com- plexity. In other words,…
