The Side Effect of Meditation I Didn’t Expect

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In this piece for The Elephant Journal, Flavia Simas shares how meditation not only helped reduce her depression and anxiety but also improved her self-esteem. "It helps...
butterflies healing

A Healing Journey: Leaving Psychiatry Behind

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The world calls what was "wrong" with me "bipolar." I prefer the notion that I went through a birth process to become the healer that I am today. I can't be silent because I know there are people like I was who are trapped and may not realize it yet. When they begin to see the prison bars that surround them, I want to be there for them as others were for me.

The Virtues of Isolation

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From The Atlantic: While solitude is often stigmatized and even viewed as dangerous to our health, spending time alone can actually prove to be valuable...

Psychics Who Hear Voices Could Be on to Something

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In this piece for The Atlantic, Joseph Frankel compares and contrasts the voice-hearing experiences of self-described psychics and mediums with the experiences of people diagnosed with...

Deep Ayahuasca Healing and the Truth of who you are

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From Chacruna: Shamanic healing through ayahuasca and other psychedelic modalities can help people reconnect with themselves and feel a greater sense of wholeness and unity. Article →­

Reintroducing Spirituality Could Address the Mental Health Crisis

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From The Independent: Society's cycle of compulsive consumerism and materialism is partly to blame for Britain's mental health crisis. Instead of merely referring people to...

New Data on the Adverse Effects of Meditation and Mindfulness

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

How Love Can Reformat Our Lives

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I say this about myself and everyone I have known in my life and work: No matter how overwhelmed and desperate we feel, recovery and growth depend on becoming open to loving and being loved, and seeming miracles occur when individuals change their life in recognition of these truths. Love wipes the slate clean.
envisioning psychiatric drug freedom

Envisioning Psychiatric Drug Freedom

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Psychiatric meds can shut down the emotions and consciousness enough to make it possible to tolerate dynamics that would inspire rage or surges of empowered activity without the meds. It can be helpful to look closely at these blocks and start to create a map to freedom, understanding that it is a complex process that involves not only the physiology of the body of the individual taking meds, but the architecture of the social system around that person.

Shaman: Mental illness is “good news from the other world”

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Mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, according to Malidoma Patrice Somé in “What a Shaman Sees in a Mental Hospital” published in Earth. We are...

Awe is the Everyperson’s Spiritual Experience

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From Science of Us: Researchers have found that awe and other Self-Transcendent Experiences have positive consequences for people's mental and emotional health, including enhanced interconnectedness and...

My Drug Dealer Was a Doctor: A Story of Withdrawal

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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...

Dissolving Madness, Ending the Nightmare, Beginning a Better Dream

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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.

A Standing Meditation for Self-Care

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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.

Existential Therapy Assists Patients Withdrawing From Psychiatric Drugs

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Confronting existential anxiety through “Basal Exposure Therapy” shows promising results in people withdrawing from psychotropic drugs.
out-of-body experience

Spiritual Emergency: Crisis or Transformation?

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A spiritual emergency is a crisis during which experiences are so intense that they temporarily disrupt the sense of self. Mislabeling them as pathological symptoms may be damaging to further spiritual development as well as to the individual's psychological and physiological well-being.

A Liberation Journey with Images

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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.
fire celebration

Human Connection is the Antidote to a Culture of Isolation

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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.

How an Ancient Singing Tradition Helps People Cope With Trauma

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From YES! Magazine: Lament singing, an ancient tradition once observed for spiritual purposes during funerals, weddings, and times of war, is now seeing a revival in...
turtle reason to live

Simple Things

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Sometimes it's the simple things that keep us going, especially when the complicated ones seem so overwhelming; when there's too much chaos, too many emotions, too many possibilities and impending disasters. No one can give you a reason to live. You have to find it for yourself. Until you do, try simple things. For me, it was a turtle.

“How a West African Shaman Helped My Schizophrenic Son”

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-MIA Blogger Dick Russell recounts the story of his son and Malidoma Somé.
love

Are Emotional Disorders Really Disorders of Love?

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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?

Sunday History Channel: Did Ancient Buddhist Tales Prophesy the DSM-5?

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On the Sri Lankan social media platform LankaWeb, medical doctor Ruwan M. Jayatunge recounts stories of difficult states of mind described in the ancient...

The Psychedelic Miracle

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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,...

Why Getting out of our Head is Good for us

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From Philosophy for Life: Though often pathologized by psychiatry and western science, spiritual experiences and altered states of consciousness can actually be highly therapeutic and valuable. "Having...