Sacred

From TIME: A new scientific review suggests that yoga, meditation, and other mindfulness activities can reverse stress-related changes in genes linked to health problems and...

I am humbled to share with you my life’s journey, and more importantly to convey a recent experience that has transmuted everything, opening up a new frontier of being more fully alive. I am beginning to see the invisible; or should I say I am beginning to feel it, because it is an inner experience.

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

A free recording of last week's webinar anchored to Phil Borges' Crazywise, a documentary exploring alternative approaches to mental health, is now available. Over 4,000 people...

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.

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,...

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...

Daniel Helman had a psychotic episode at age 20, but has been off all psychiatric medications since 2006 and is now 44. In Schizophrenia...

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

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.

From Aeon: Experiencing ecstasy and transcendence has long been pathologized and marginalized by Western culture and the psychiatric model of "mental illness." However, ecstatic experiences, including...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

From Vox: Mindfulness-based interventions are increasingly being introduced in schools and touted as helpful methods of reducing students' anxiety and attention problems. However, the research...

Much of what we term “madness” is, in fact, the awakening of the "Self" to its own Wholeness/Divinity. We are born totally pure. Throughout our lives we are subject to projections, flung at us from a multitude of directions: from Mom and Dad, from schools, religious institutions, the media, and the medical model. We are all buried, to some degree, under projections, and interesting symptoms emerge: nightmares, stress and anxiety, fear, flashbacks, and so on. These are not "Madness," but symptoms of health; of a "Self" attempting to break free from lies.

In this piece for Nautilus, Veronique Greenwood discusses the legacy of Julian Jaynes, a psychologist best known for theorizing that consciousness was a cultural development resulting...

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

In this interview for Scientific American, psychiatrist John Halpern discusses some of the potentially therapeutic effects of peyote, ayahuasca, psilocybin, MDMA and other psychedelics. "Once when...