Sacred

The Orthodox believe that we are all mentally ill due to sin and that the Orthodox Church is the hospital for the soul, the psychiatric hospital with God being our Psychiatrist, the Physician of our souls. Orthodox belief regarding the human psyche may appear to be pure madness, even delusional, from the perspective of modern western medical science.

In this interview for The Atlantic, James Kugel speculates on the minds and experiences of ancient prophets through a neuroscientific lens, exploring how biblical people's sense of...

I am so thankful that my brain healed from the damage caused by psychiatric medications. Most importantly, finding my purpose in life and living an authentic life helped to ground me and prevent further psychosis. Psychosis is the psyche’s cry for transformation and healing. When one listens to the call, one is brought from darkness to light.

Spirituality and transcendental experiences are even more important than religion to the psychological well-being of many Black American women, according to a study in...

From The New York Times: In his new book The Mind of God, neurologist Jay Lombard uses his experience studying neuroscience to discuss philosophical and spiritual...

-When we "re-narrate" our own stories and identities, it may be an opportunity for either liberation or re-oppression.

In this interview for The New Inquiry, two co-editors and three writers of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements discuss prison abolition and...

You can’t go back to mundane ways of seeing the world after very dark things happen. Trauma cracks open a hole in our lives and in our minds, throwing us into the zone where we face the big spiritual questions. Bad ideas can get in when things open up like that. But it’s also possible that something new and positive can get in.

From Aeon: While psychiatric drugs are often ineffective and can have serious side effects, there are many psychedelics and other illicit substances that have proven...

With current self-publishing capabilities, there’s little that can stop anyone with the slightest messianic complex from actualizing their potential as a prophet—except perhaps the tactics psychiatry employs: forced drugging, locking people up and limiting their abilities to communicate with the rest of the world.

The International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry had the clout to draw a stellar line-up of presenters to its recent conference, including internationally prominent critics like David Healy, Peter Gøtzsche, Robert Whitaker and Allen Frances. There were lots of learnings and even some tense discussions, but one of the most intriguing aspects of the entire conference was the way in which scientific and social issues became deeply intertwined, especially when presenters reached for better pathways forward.

From Rolling Stone Magazine: Both the underground practice of and aboveground research on the use of psychedelic drugs to heal PTSD, as well as depression, anxiety,...

Could the whole array of psychiatric diagnostic categories, to the extent that they have any validity at all, be expressions of the failure to love and to accept love? Do successful psychotherapies really work by means of the therapist’s ability to encourage people to experience love through how positively he or she relates to them?

In this piece for Beyond Meds, Chris Cole examines the intersection of racism and oppression against people labeled "mentally ill." "This is where social justice becomes...

From Big Think: In Robert Wright's new book Why Buddhism is True, he illustrates how contemporary science has confirmed some of the core tenets and beliefs...

This week we e-release a new free booklet, Pathways to Enhance Well-Being. Its creation began with my colleague Linda Lentini sharing with me some of the barriers she experienced as she moved towards bringing alternative approaches such as meditation and breath practices into state psychiatric institutions.

In this piece for On Being, Sharon Salzberg discusses the importance of self-care and describes a meditation technique that can help increase self-love and self-compassion.

Ayahuasca found to be effective in treating moderate to severe depression in low-income population.

Study reports on the less-examined findings of difficult and painful meditation-related experiences.

What are some tactics used by voices, and what can you do about it? I hope the suggestions in this piece can help desperate voice-hearers become more understanding of the forces behind their agony, and perhaps bring a more enlightened perspective to the chemically-lobotomizing tendencies of their psychiatrists who treat voices with more medication.

In this piece for Medium, Michael E. Lee tells his story of experiencing the horrific withdrawal effects of Effexor, and how he healed from his...

I details what happened to Jeffrey Fidel when he quit psychiatric drugs and embraced an alternative, non-medical healing approach — a set of philosophical and spiritual teachings known as the Tao Te Ching and Hua Hu Ching.

In recent years, American scholars and thinkers have increasingly argued for the secularization and modernization of Buddhism, proposing meditation as a fully secular form...

We need to burn through some darkness before we collectively see the light. The light is a palpable shift toward reaching for human connection; toward opening our hearts and our minds and intentionally focusing on the positive future that wants to emerge.

What media hype and those selling mindfulness don’t tell you is that mindfulness is a process that can radically transform you, and it’s not always safe, nor is it easy or straightforward. We make it safer by being aware of the risks and learning to listen to our own bodies about when it is or isn’t okay for us. No one else actually knows.