of discernment. The way of intentionality, the way of experimenting, and conversation, and collaboration in the family around what the central priorities are. RW:  Okay. Now, this story that you told about the little girl who says, “The Lion King is too loud.” And then you found out she was talking about what was going on in her head. I mean, that’s a pretty disturbing story. Mary:  It is, and it should disturb us. That’s what’s happening. These images are so strong and so fearful. The father dies, the uncle’s evil. It doesn’t correspond to children’s daily life. It’s exactly that that’s the issue for me; instead... posted on Jul 11 2016 (21,071 reads)

Srinivasan and her husband Ragu Padmanabhan had Silicon Valley careers, when in 2008, soon after having their son Aum, they promptly sold everything off and moved to rural India. They wanted to farm, but had no experience in it and so set out as students of the land -- for instance, when they planted 9000 trees on their barren land, thousands didn't make it, but thousands blossomed into a mini-forest. More generally, they jumped in with the intention of living and being in a way that was better aligned with their inner voices, and learning what they needed along the way. In their own words, they just saw it simply as an"experiment in laying a new path on an old road that leads... posted on Sep 22 2016 (25,400 reads)

an effort to shop from socially-conscious brands this holiday season, I came across an interesting startup that caught my eye. Two Blind Brothers is a cause-driven clothing brand that sells luxury causal wear and gives 100% of its net profits to medical research to cure blindness. Read on. The line was founded by Bradford and Bryan Manning, two brothers affected by a macular degeneration disease known as Stargardt. The disease causes progressive damage to the center retina causing a loss of central vision. The National Eye Institute estimates that one in 10,000 people are affected by the disease. Since being diagnosed at age six, both brothers have progressively l... posted on Dec 30 2016 (12,580 reads)

paradox here is that the accommodations needed for somebody with a mental illness are often minor—things like flex time to see your psychologist during lunch. The cost to the organization is miniscule, but people are too afraid of the shame and stigma to even ask for it. There needs to be support for individuals with mental illness to dare to disclose. Contact and support are urgently needed, including empathy on the part of the general public. We need to change media images. We did a study on how mental illness is portrayed in the media—with coders blind to what we were looking for—and found little change in how mental illness has been portrayed over t... posted on Sep 4 2017 (9,680 reads)

install solar panels at College of the Atlantic's Beech Hill Farm. Photo courtesy of College of the Atlantic These are the colleges and universities making an impact not just on campus, but in the world at large. As many environmental regulations in the United States are reconsidered and loosened, these colleges and universities are committed to cultivating sustainable campuses and future environmental leaders. The vegetables harvested by students from University of California, Davis, go to the Yolo County Food Bank. Photo courtesy of Gregory Urquiaga/UC Davis UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS; DAVIS, CALIF. U.C. Davis is among the schools leading the way in... posted on Nov 18 2017 (10,708 reads)

Sharma was born to a family of farmers in a village close to Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. He started farming at the age of 10 along with his family but moved to Bhopal after class 8 for higher education. A few years later, Prateek – the boy from a small village, was appointed as a chief manager of Kotak Mahindra Bank. After 10 years of banking, he earned a good pay and had a comfortable life. He even married Prateeksha, who also worked at Kotak. But, Prateek could not continue the corporate life with ease, as his heart was always in farming. Prateek and Prateeksha “When I visited my village after 20 years, I realised that everyone was moving out of the villag... posted on Dec 27 2017 (12,381 reads)

back to high school, or even earlier. What sort of things pointed you toward the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, for instance? SG: Well, I started writing poetry when I was nine or ten. My first poem was put in a collection of kids’ poetry. It was kind of a crazy poem, “My Experience in Hell”—perhaps motivated by a strong religious upbringing. I'm Eastern Orthodox, which isn’t a hellish journey by any means. It’s just that you absorb a lot of images and symbols and if you have a creative mind, a lot of these things come alive and influence one’s creative output. And shortly after that poem, I wrote “Blue Paradise,” a poem... posted on Nov 17 2017 (14,286 reads)

molecule noradrenaline. At the same time, key emotional and memory-related structures of the brain are reactivated during REM sleep as we dream. This means that emotional memory reactivation is occurring in a brain free of a key stress chemical, which allows us to re-process upsetting memories in a safer, calmer environment. How do we know this is so? In one study in my sleep center, healthy young adult participants were divided into two groups to watch a set of emotion-inducing images while inside an MRI scanner. Twelve hours later, they were shown the same emotional images—but for half the participants, the twelve hours were in the same day, while for the other half t... posted on Apr 22 2018 (17,162 reads)

connecting us as sensory beings. It reveals messages and meaning, it can create comfort through a colour palette, a chord, a poem, a photograph. Art can enhance an environment or soften it. It creates space, it allows room to breathe and connect to the present. I think art helps us acknowledge our own humanity, and remind us that we are all in this together, all deserving of the kindness of strangers. Which is why the Super Power Baby Project has had such an impact I guess. The images in the book shine back at you with so much life! Photography was my tool for communicating how amazing the children are. I was able to capture them, and their personalities and spark in a way t... posted on Aug 27 2018 (8,945 reads)

any given day, many of us wrestle with our fears. We might be contemplating a career change, telling someone we love them, or wanting to speak up for what’s right when we see injustice. But a voice within us pipes up saying that there’s no point, or that we aren’t really capable of creating the life or world we desire.  Whether you call it “fear” or some other name—anxiety, stress, discomfort, life challenges—the cycle often plays out in the same way. We have a desire for change, but our fear of what might happen or the worry that we are somehow not enough can keep us stuck. In my new book, The Courage Habit, I argue that when it c... posted on Apr 18 2020 (31,288 reads)

of the people I know seem to have a deep sense of purpose. Whether working for racial justice, teaching children to read, making inspiring art, or collecting donations of masks and face shields for hospitals during the pandemic, they’ve found ways to blend their passion, talents, and care for the world in a way that infuses their lives with meaning. Luckily for them, having a purpose in life is associated with all kinds of benefits. Research suggests that purpose is tied to having better health, longevity, and even economic success. It feels good to have a sense of purpose, knowing that you are using your skills to help others in a way that matters to you. But... posted on Aug 12 2020 (10,772 reads)

source Thomas Schwatke By bringing fresh air to persistent challenges, we can get past feeling overwhelmed to make a better world together. That's what we do at THE OUTSIDE: we help collaborators get unstuck with pivotal events, capacity-building, and strategy that sparks significant change. Today, we explore the key ingredient to change that makes a difference: equity. A conscious practice of equitable systems change often begins with a bang—an abrupt coming-to, a sad realization, a peak of failure or outcry or injustice. Something urgent enough to make us realize the effectiveness and relevance of our systems is diminishing exponentially. From higher up than ... posted on Sep 15 2020 (6,016 reads)

to start to actually have a more conscious, embodied sort of relationship with that alchemical process that’s going on all the time. I mean, just the ways that we are attempting to make sense of our experience is an alchemical sort of endeavor. I think one of the gifts that alchemy offers us is this idea that of course, many of us have heard, that there’s a certain gold, right? There’s a certain jewel, gold, or silver, or a lapis, you have the stone, the ruby, whatever images you want to use. There is some kind of gold that’s found, not in a wound that’s actually already healed, right? The gold isn’t found in a healed wound. The gold is found&mdash... posted on Dec 12 2020 (5,857 reads)

more psychological answer: These are very, very hard subjects, and it's easier to talk about funerary rituals and who's throwing cowrie shells or doing incantations or prayers or wrapping the body in a shroud. Let’s talk about funerary rituals and all the stereotypes that were swirling about while the outbreak was happening. You point out that many people were examining the spread of Ebola through a lens of exoticization. How do you hope that the book adds nuance to blameful images associated with Ebola? I have never not encountered this distorting interpretive grid. Go right through the list of places that PIH has worked, places I've seen and written abo... posted on Dec 16 2020 (3,703 reads)

humans, we inevitably experience harm: we feel hurt, we get hurt, and we hurt others. We free ourselves from this experience not by imagining we can escape harm but knowing we can heal it— moving from wound to scar—and then learning to love the scars. This can, of course, be the work of a lifetime. Luckily, I have long loved scars. When I was four, I accidentally cut my left eye. As a result, a small scar formed directly under my eye and inside the eye, where the pupil stayed dilated with a keyhole in it. After I had the eye removed at twenty-one, a photographer I knew told me she wanted to record people’s scars, so I asked her to photograph me with my empty socket. I... posted on Jul 4 2021 (5,192 reads)

am happier now, after the angst of my earlier years. Those years were rough. I started life in a factory as a coiled mix of copper and zinc being pressed into a small, cup-like shape. Then I was pulled mechanically into a cylinder and stretched to form a tight tube. Even the memory is painful: in order to be stretched without breaking, I had to be heated, annealed, pickled, rinsed, and measured, over and over. After that, machining tools pinched off the top of me , stamped my bottom, and jammed me into a permanent tubular shape. I won’t even share the details of what followed: the whirring lathe, the cutting, the punching of the “flash hole”, the final sealing that ... posted on Dec 13 2021 (2,144 reads)

is “that hypervigilant feeling that escalates swiftly to a sense of catastrophe and doom,” writes Ellen Vora, M.D., in her new book, The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body’s Fear Response. Anxiety is “as grounded in the body as it is in the mind.” Too often, she argues, we turn to only mental solutions for what is in part a physical problem. That resonates with me. When I feel anxious, some solutions I try—like talking to a friend or watching TV—are hit or miss. Over the years, the only foolproof remedies I’ve found have to do with the body: A good high-intensity workout is bound to make me feel better, ... posted on Apr 7 2022 (8,775 reads)

essay is adapted from Embracing Unrest: Harness Vulnerability to Tame Anxiety and Spark Growth (October 2022, 274 pages) published by Page Two Books. When was the last time you felt anxious, with your body braced and on edge? It could have been when your partner was late coming home and you couldn’t reach them on their cell, your computer crashed just before a deadline, your child had a full-on tantrum in the grocery store, or you were waiting on medical test results. In that moment, how did you respond? Maybe you grabbed a bag of cheese puffs, or had a sudden impulse to tidy the kitchen, or found yourself online shopping for that incredibly useful cauliflower core... posted on Apr 5 2023 (6,174 reads)

the lyrics of the iconic happiness anthem to find surprising science-tested insights on well-being. In 1988, Bobby McFerrin wrote one of the most beloved anthems to happiness of all time. On September 24 that year, “Don’t Worry Be Happy” became the first a cappella song to reach #1 on the Billboard Top 100 Chart. But more than a mere feel-good tune, the iconic song is brimming with neuroscience and psychology insights on happiness that McFerrin — whose fascinating musings on music and the brain you might recall from World Science Festival’s Notes & Neurons — embedded in its lyrics, whether consciously or not. T... posted on Dec 22 2011 (41,033 reads)

Ronald Reagan has to do with gorilla costumes, Shakespeare and fake pennies.   The intricate mechanisms of the human mind are endlessly fascinating. We’ve previously explored various facets of how the mind works — from how we decide towhat makes us happy to why music affects us so deeply — and today we’re turning to when it doesn’t: Here are five fantastic reads on why we err, what it means to be wrong, and how to make cognitive lemonade out of wrongness’s lemons. BEING WRONG The pleasure of being right is one of the most universal human addictions and most of us spend an extraordinary amount of effort on avoidi... posted on Nov 11 2011 (9,169 reads)