Several studies today show that music therapy– an evidence-based approach to therapy drawing on the healing power of creative lyrics and song composition–can be a useful treatment for depression. In one study published in the “British Journal of Psychiatry,” 79 depressed adults were assigned to receive standard care only (psychotherapy and medication) or standard care...

A Buddhist proverb says that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. After five years of trying to learn and practice mindfulness—moment to moment awareness, or paying attention to the present moment—on my own and ending up … well … different than the bald guys in the ochre and saffron robes, I decided...

I’m a late convert to yoga. I’ve known since I was about18 that lotus pose and other positions seem to help with emotional problems, or at least that’s what my first therapist told me, but it’s taken me about 24 years to come around to it. The research is on yoga is substantial and keeps...

Good sleep can mean the difference between crazy and sane … between crying between meetings at work or lashing out at your husband over laundry and a semi-functional person who can fake it enough to keep her marriage and her job intact. It’s one of the members of my holy trinity of good mental health,...

For two decades Richard J. Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has documented how meditation can alter your brain. He has studied the brains of Buddhist monks who, for instance, have a much stronger “gamma” wave...