Mindfulness and meditation aren’t easy for anyone. Whenever we dim the lights and sit in Indian style, there is a core part of our primitive brain that rebels like a hyper puppy in a choke collar: “Don’t do that to me! You know I need to roam!” But for professional ruminators such as myself, meditation...
Although American poet T. S. Eliot didn’t have an advanced psychology degree, I think he nailed the reasons why so many people get depressed and anxious in the spring in his classic poem, “The Waste Land.” He writes, “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring...
Back before there were psychiatrists and therapists, way before the introduction of Prozac and Xanax, people were using mantras to calm their nervous systems and sooth symptoms of depression and malaise. In fact, the earliest mantras were used by Hindus more than 3,000 years ago. Employed by Buddhists, Christians, Taoists, and persons of most faith...
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, each time expecting different results. It’s like that infuriating toy grabber claw arcade game where all you have to do is cinch the claw at the right time and the cute stuffed pig or octopus is yours. Oh! —there it goes!, you...
A reader recently asked me to give some tips for beating insomnia, so I thought I’d repost this piece. A few years ago, I experienced a terrible case of insomnia. I took the sleeping drug Lunesta, which afforded me a few wonderful nights’ sleep, until I realized it substantially increased my anxiety during the day....