Nature Therapy Quotes

Humankind has not learned about balance, let alone practiced it. It is guided by greed and ambition, steered by fear. In this way it will eventually destroy itself. But nature will survive; at least the plants will.

People who are diagnosed as having "generalized anxiety disorder" are afflicted by three major problems that many of us experience to a lesser extent from time to time. First and foremost, says Rapgay, the natural human inclination to focus on threats and bad news is strongly amplified in them, so that even significant positive events get suppressed. An inflexible mentality and tendency toward excessive verbalizing make therapeutic intervention a further challenge.

I often feel caught in a dilemma: on the one hand I wish to be more natural with you and yet, on the other hand, because I feel that you’re easily wounded and that you give my comments inordinate power, I feel I must consider my wording very, very carefully.

The establishment of an authentic relationship with patients, by its very nature, demands that we forego the power of the triumvirate of magic, mystery, and authority.

Nature is cheaper than therapy.

A passionate look, touch or a hug on a plant is enough to open your inner eyes than going for a serious yoga and other therapies

I believe that for every illness or ailment known to man, that God has a plant out here that will heal it. We just need to keep discovering the properties for natural healing.

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.

Man transcends himself only via his true nature, not through ambition and artificial goals.

As we embrace our passions and delve into the mystery of life, we unite with the majestic complexity of nature; and if we follow the signs, this can help us understand who we really are.

The primary nature of every human being is to be open to life and love. Being guarded, armoured, distrustful and enclosed is second nature in our culture. It is the means we adopt to protect ourselves against being hurt, but when such attitudes become characterological or structured in the personality, they constitute a more severe hurt and create a greater crippling than the one originally suffered.

Whenever you feel down, take a long walk in nature.

There is a very dark and painful side to life, but that is natural. People in our culture think they should never be unhappy. They think that being unhappy is unnatural. They try to make it go away. They take pills or they go to therapy to "fix" themselves. They blame themselves or others for their suffering. We need to understand that sadness is as much a part of life as joy. It would be easy just to get bitter and cold while focusing on the dark side, but there is also an amazing, wonderful side of life. If you look for it, there is true magic all around us. Maybe that sounds trite to the hardened, self-protective modern ego, but there is magiv in this miraculous life. If you open yourself up, you do make yourself vulnerable to pain but the deeper the pain you experience, the deeper joy you have.

Untraumatized people have a natural instinct to make healthy decisions in the best interest of their true selves. They are only limited by their immaturity and the brokenness of their external world.

Bioenergetics is an adventure in self-discovery. It differs from similar explorations into the nature of the self by attempting to understand the human personality in terms of the human body. Most previous explorations focused their investigations on the mind.

If people were not by nature insane and resistant to self-improvement or therapy,

Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry; an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by God. It is this spot of grace that issues peace. Psychologists call this spot the Psyche, Theologians call it the Soul, Jung calls it the Seat of the Unconscious, Hindu masters call it Atman, Buddhists call it Dharma, Rilke calls it Inwardness, Sufis call it Qalb, and Jesus calls it the Center of our Love. To know this spot of Inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or what we wear or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it. This is a hard lifelong task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential. Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to that incorruptible spot of grace at our core. When the film is worn through, we have moments of enlightenment, moments of wholeness, moments of Satori as the Zen sages term it, moments of clear living when inner meets outer, moments of full integrity of being, moments of complete Oneness. And whether the film is a veil of culture, of memory, of mental or religious training, of trauma or sophistication, the removal of that film and the restoration of that timeless spot of grace is the goal of all therapy and education. Regardless of subject matter, this is the only thing worth teaching: how to uncover that original center and how to live there once it is restored. We call the filming over a deadening of heart, and the process of return, whether brought about through suffering or love, is how we unlearn our way back to God

Although the client-centered approach had its origin purely within the limits of the psychological clinic, it is proving to have implications, often of a startling nature, for very diverse fields of effort.

The true aspiration of art should be to reduce the need for it. It is not that we should one day lose our devotion to the things that art addresses: beauty, depth of meaning, good relationships, the appreciation of nature, recognition of the shortness of life, empathy, compassion, and so on. Rather, having imbibed the ideals that art displays, we should fight to attain in reality the things art merely symbolises, however graciously and intently. The ultimate goal of the art lover should be to build a world where works of art have become a little less necessary

We can’t talk about our own health without understanding our place in our environment, because in order to fulfill our potential we have to live in the context of our surroundings. We have to know our place in the ecosystem of which we are a part, and this means living 'consciously': being aware of nature and how it affects us and how we, in turn, affect nature.

most cherished desires of present-day Westerners are shaped by romantic, nationalist, capitalist and humanist myths that have been around for centuries. Friends giving advice often tell each other, ‘Follow your heart.’ But the heart is a double agent that usually takes its instructions from the dominant myths of the day, and the very recommendation to ‘follow your heart’ was implanted in our minds by a combination of nineteenth-century Romantic myths and twentieth-century consumerist myths. The Coca-Cola Company, for example, has marketed Diet Coke around the world under the slogan ‘Diet Coke. Do what feels good.’ Even what people take to be their most personal desires are usually programmed by the imagined order. Let’s consider, for example, the popular desire to take a holiday abroad. There is nothing natural or obvious about this. A chimpanzee alpha male would never think of using his power in order to go on holiday into the territory of a neighbouring chimpanzee band. The elite of ancient Egypt spent their fortunes building pyramids and having their corpses mummified, but none of them thought of going shopping in Babylon or taking a skiing holiday in Phoenicia. People today spend a great deal of money on holidays abroad because they are true believers in the myths of romantic consumerism. Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can. We must open ourselves to a wide spectrum of emotions; we must sample various kinds of relationships; we must try different cuisines; we must learn to appreciate different styles of music. One of the best ways to do all that is to break free from our daily routine, leave behind our familiar setting, and go travelling in distant lands, where we can ‘experience’ the culture, the smells, the tastes and the norms of other people. We hear again and again the romantic myths about ‘how a new experience opened my eyes and changed my life’. Consumerism tells us that in order to be happy we must consume as many products and services as possible. If we feel that something is missing or not quite right, then we probably need to buy a product (a car, new clothes, organic food) or a service (housekeeping, relationship therapy, yoga classes). Every television commercial is another little legend about how consuming some product or service will make life better. 18. The Great Pyramid of Giza. The kind of thing rich people in ancient Egypt did with their money. Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism. Their marriage has given birth to the infinite ‘market of experiences’, on which the modern tourism industry is founded. The tourism industry does not sell flight tickets and hotel bedrooms. It sells experiences. Paris is not a city, nor India a country – they are both experiences, the consumption of which is supposed to widen our horizons, fulfil our human potential, and make us happier. Consequently, when the relationship between a millionaire and his wife is going through a rocky patch, he takes her on an expensive trip to Paris. The trip is not a reflection of some independent desire, but rather of an ardent belief in the myths of romantic consumerism. A wealthy man in ancient Egypt would never have dreamed of solving a relationship crisis by taking his wife on holiday to Babylon. Instead, he might have built for her the sumptuous tomb she had always wanted. Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place.

Great music stops the inner turmoil of thought and allows the mind to seek its natural state of joy. Music frees our minds and allows us to soar to heights where we can experience the celestial. Music opens our minds to allow the perception of new thoughts of a higher nature, which gives us a spiritual lift, which produces yet more joy.

The cases described in this section (The Fear of Being) may seem extreme, but I have become convinced that they are not as uncommon as one would think. Beneath the seemingly rational exterior of our lives is a fear of insanity. We dare not question the values by which we live or rebel against the roles we play for fear of putting our sanity into doubt. We are like the inmates of a mental institution who must accept its inhumanity and insensitivity as caring and knowledgeableness if they hope to be regarded as sane enough to leave. The question who is sane and who is crazy was the theme of the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The question, what is sanity? was clearly asked in the play Equus. The idea that much of what we do is insane and that if we want to be sane, we must let ourselves go crazy has been strongly advanced by R.D. Laing. In the preface to the Pelican edition of his book The Divided Self, Laing writes: "In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all of our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal." And in the same preface: "Thus I would wish to emphasize that our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities; that many of us are only too successful in acquiring a false self to adapt to false realities." Wilhelm Reich had a somewhat similar view of present-day human behavior. Thus Reich says, "Homo normalis blocks off entirely the perception of basic orgonotic functioning by means of rigid armoring; in the schizophrenic, on the other hand, the armoring practically breaks down and thus the biosystem is flooded with deep experiences from the biophysical core with which it cannot cope." The "deep experiences" to which Reich refers are the pleasurable streaming sensations associated with intense excitation that is mainly sexual in nature. The schizophrenic cannot cope with these sensations because his body is too contracted to tolerate the charge. Unable to "block" the excitation or reduce it as a neurotic can, and unable to "stand" the charge, the schizophrenic is literally "driven crazy." But the neurotic does not escape so easily either. He avoids insanity by blocking the excitation, that is, by reducing it to a point where there is no danger of explosion, or bursting. In effect the neurotic undergoes a psychological castration. However, the potential for explosive release is still present in his body, although it is rigidly guarded as if it were a bomb. The neurotic is on guard against himself, terrified to let go of his defenses and allow his feelings free expression. Having become, as Reich calls him, "homo normalis," having bartered his freedom and ecstasy for the security of being "well adjusted," he sees the alternative as "crazy." And in a sense he is right. Without going "crazy," without becoming "mad," so mad that he could kill, it is impossible to give up the defenses that protect him in the same way that a mental institution protects its inmates from self-destruction and the destruction of others.

And so we see people who are spiritually disconnected, living in boxes and driving in boxes, perhaps once a year going "out to nature" to get a small touch of what was once the daily experience of humans. These people seek escape. They sit in urban and suburban homes and feel miserable, not knowing why, experiencing anxiety and fear and pain that cannot be softened by drugs or TV or therapy because they are afflicted with a sickness of the soul, not of the mind.

To the extent that you actually realize that you are not, for example, your anxieties, then your anxieties no longer threaten you. Even if anxiety is present, it no longer overwhelms you because you are no longer exclusively tied to it. You are no longer courting it, fighting it, resisting it, or running from it. In the most radical fashion, anxiety is thoroughly accepted as it is and allowed to move as it will. You have nothing to lose, nothing to gain, by its presence or absence, for you are simply watching it pass by. Thus, any emotion, sensation, thought, memory, or experience that disturbs you is simply one with which you have exclusively identified yourself, and the ultimate resolution of the disturbance is simply to dis-identify with it. You cleanly let all of them drop away by realizing that they are not you--since you can see them, they cannot be the true Seer and Subject. Since they are not your real self, there is no reason whatsoever for you to identify with them, hold on to them, or allow your self to be bound by them. Slowly, gently, as you pursue this dis-identification "therapy," you may find that your entire individual self (persona, ego, centaur), which heretofore you have fought to defend and protect, begins to go transparent and drop away. Not that it literally falls off and you find yourself floating, disembodied, through space. Rather, you begin to feel that what happens to your personal self—your wishes, hopes, desires, hurts—is not a matter of life-or-death seriousness, because there is within you a deeper and more basic self which is not touched by these peripheral fluctuations, these surface waves of grand commotion but feeble substance. Thus, your personal mind-and-body may be in pain, or humiliation, or fear, but as long as you abide as the witness of these affairs, as if from on high, they no longer threaten you, and thus you are no longer moved to manipulate them, wrestle with them, or subdue them. Because you are willing to witness them, to look at them impartially, you are able to transcend them. As St. Thomas put it, "Whatever knows certain things cannot have any of them in its own nature." Thus, if the eye were colored red, it wouldn't be able to perceive red objects. It can see red because it is clear, or "redless." Likewise, if we can but watch or witness our distresses, we prove ourselves thereby to be "distress-less," free of the witnessed turmoil. That within which feels pain is itself pain-less; that which feels fear is fear-less; that which perceives tension is tensionless. To witness these states is to transcend them. They no longer seize you from behind because you look at them up front.

A peculiarity of the nature of your mind is that, in contrast to your physical constitution (dosha) that is fixed from birth, it can be altered through discrimination and choice.

Spring time is nature at its best.

To love the creations of the Earth is to worship the Being who created them.

Working with plants will teach you all other social commitments in a soothing way...

The Japanese have a concept, shinrin yoku—forest bathing—which is a form of therapy that uses nature as a treatment for mental and spiritual issues.

Those who train their hearts in natural wonder shall forever know the rivers, forests, wildflowers, and oceans, as friends.

BDSM, in its nature, is a very intimate and intelligent therapy, if done properly.

Too often the survivor is seen by [himself or] herself and others as "nuts," "crazy," or "weird." Unless her responses are understood within the context of trauma. A traumatic stress reaction consists of *natural* emotions and behaviors in response to a catastrophe, its immediate aftermath, or memories of it. These reactions can occur anytime after the trauma, even decades later. The coping strategies that victims use can be understood only within the context of the abuse of a child. The importance of context was made very clear many years ago when I was visiting the home of a Holocaust survivor. The woman's home was within the city limits of a large metropolitan area. Every time a police or ambulance siren sounded, she became terrified and ran and hid in a closet or under the bed. To put yourself in a closet at the sound of a far-off siren is strange behavior indeed—outside of the context of possibly being sent to a death camp. Within that context, it makes perfect sense. Unless we as therapists have a good grasp of the context of trauma, we run the risk of misunderstanding the symptoms our clients present and, hence, responding inappropriately or in damaging ways.

Nature and birdwatching can offer a great deal of stability. In the life of someone living with daily mental health issues, these consistencies can act as an anchor to the present and provide grounding.

The natural healing of sound can happen also when you do such a simple thing as listen to the rain. You do not need drugs, hypnotism, or even meditation. You only need to allow and direct the freedom of your conscious mind. Left alone, it will flow through thoughts and images that provide their own therapy.

The greatest teacher in healing is nature itself. To be out in the nature is like being surrounded and embraced by love. Trees are also very beautiful people, who have their own innate wisdom and who are already in oneness with Existence. And the sky whispers its silent message that, beyond everything, there is only one sky. A female meditator describes it like there is a basic meditative quality in nature. She says: "There is nothing in nature that questions each others existence like people do. Everything is allowed to exist and everything is allowed to be exactly as it is – and seasons come and go. It is not strange that people love to be out in nature and experiences that they come in harmony with themselves, because, in nature, there is nothing that tries to change them. There is a quality in the air, which can be called a meditative quality".

The challenge for us is to realise our unity with all life, and even with the inanimate world around us. The seas with their currents, the atmosphere and the continents of the earth are all in motion, stirring with their own kinds of life. Our malaise as a civilised people comes in large measure from our ability to distance ourselves from nature and from one another. A real therapy is one with a vision, not only of the individual person, but also of how the whole planet is to be healed.

At the heart of the therapy is learning to notice and accept one’s cravings and to handle them healthfully. Instead of suppressing urges, ACT prescribes a method for stepping back, noticing, observing, and finally letting the desire disappear naturally.

Remembering that the impulse to control is an indication that we are having a neuroception of danger, perhaps we can be compassionate rather than critical of ourselves when we do step in to overtly manage the process. Perhaps we can begin to ask inside about the nature of the threat that brings on the need to assert control and fix. As always, dropping the questions into our right hemisphere and not expecting a particular answer in this moment opens the way for a deeper understanding to emerge bit by bit.

the extent we function and grow within the context of our own souls (a lifetime project) and abet the emergence of our own selves (by a willingness to face life's challenges and oneself), our spirituality and our tradition will spring naturally from our being.

To quote Maslow again regarding his self-actualizing individuals: “One does not complain about water because it is wet, nor about rocks because they are hard. . . . As the child looks out upon the world with wide, uncritical and innocent eyes, simply noting and observing what is the case, without either arguing the matter or demanding that it be otherwise, so does the self-actualizing person look upon human nature both in himself and in others.” (4, p. 207) This acceptant attitude toward that which exists, I find developing in clients in therapy.

Movement is the province of the muscular system: a child who needs to inhibit his or her natural feelings, whether for healthy or unhealthy reasons, also unconsciously either inhibits muscles that would express those feelings or activates muscles opposing those muscles of expression. In either case, the effect is the same: using the muscular body to keep the unacceptable emotions "under wrap." Touch can disrupt the patterns of muscular tension intended to inhibit emotions; thus, touch can have the effect of changing a person's emotional responses and promoting emotional healing.

Empathy teaches this lesson; it is one of the feelings we are put on Earth to learn, a key aspect of our preparation for immortality. It is difficult lesson in that we must experience it not only in our mind but in our physical bodies, and in the mind and body we have pain, dark emotions, difficult relationships, enemies, loss and grief. We thus tend to forget others and concentrate on ourselves. But we also have love, beauty, music, art, dance, nature, and air, and we long to share them. We cannot transform negativity into the positive without empathy, and we cannot truly understand empathy without experiencing it in our present life, in our past, and in our future.

I have always thought of urban gardens - most gardens - as islands, where we create our own kingdoms, acting out our need for land, nurture and nature. On this weekend all these tiny islands wake again, each one crammed with insects, birdsong (often far better in town than country) and slow-moving people emerging into this gift of extra light.

There are so many colours and flavours to be found in natural settings – embrace and enjoy them. Next time you’re outdoors, stop and immerse yourself in the colours around you.

(...) giving something back to nature can be a genuinely rewarding act.

No other sound can match the healing power of the sounds of nature.

In America, Rousseauism has turned Freud’s conflict-based psychoanalysis into weepy hand-holding. Contemporary liberalism is untruthful about cosmic realities. Therapy, defining anger and hostility in merely personal terms, seeks to cure what was never a problem before Rousseau. Mediterranean, as well as African-American, culture has a lavish system of language and gesture to channel and express negative emotion. Rousseauists who take the Utopian view of personality are always distressed or depressed over world outbreaks of violence and anarchy. But because, as a Sadean, I believe history is in nature and of it, I tend to be far more cheerful and optimistic than my liberal friends. Despite crime’s omnipresence, things work in society, because biology compels it. Order eventually restores itself, by psychic equilibrium. Films like Seven Samurai (1954) and Two Women (1961) accurately show the breakdown of social controls as a regression to animal-like squalor.

It has generally been assumed that fairy tales were first created for children and are largely the domain of children. But nothing could be further from the truth. From the very beginning, thousands of years ago, when tales were told to create communal bonds in face of the inexplicable forces of nature, to the present, when fairy tales are written and told to provide hope in a world seemingly on the brink of catastrophe, mature men and women have been the creators and cultivators of the fairy tale tradition. When introduced to fairy tales, children welcome them mainly because they nurture their great desire for change and independence. On the whole, the literary fairy tale has become an established genre within a process of Western civilization that cuts across all ages. Even though numerous critics and shamans have mystified and misinterpreted the fairy tale because of their spiritual quest for universal archetypes or their need to save the world through therapy, both the oral and the literary forms of the fairy tale are grounded in history: they emanate from specific struggles to humanize bestial and barbaric forces, which have terrorized our minds and communities in concrete ways, threatening to destroy free will and human compassion. The fairy tale sets out to conquer this concrete terror through metaphors.

If you send a child to therapy before you've been for yourself, the child rightly discerns that you consider the child the problem. If, however, you've used therapy in your life before asking your child to go, she learns that therapy is a natural choice for people who want to live conscious, healthy lives. Therapy is good emotional and mental hygiene - just as teeth cleanings and going to the gym are good for physical health. Nothing to be ashamed of!

Even if a psychoanalytic understanding of one’s life is potentially liberating—and I think it may be—psychoanalytic therapy, by itself, cannot overcome trauma, or human nature. Nor can psychological healing take place in isolation.

Possibly the most compelling reason for use of the expressive arts in trauma work is the sensory nature of the arts themselves; their qualities involve visual, tactile, olfactory, auditory, vestibular, and proprioceptive experiences.

We are born free as creatures of bliss, compassion, friendliness, innocence and curiosity. Among us, there is a tremendous love and natural belonging. Burning beneath our numbness, negativity and grief is a celebration of life and a passion for being here

The hamster friend said being able to do front rolls didn't make the hamster as good as Bruce Lee, which was not a true statement and not an untrue statement, because the word 'good' is meaningless until defined within a context and a goal, and hamsters when enjoying the company of other hamsters rarely define or think about contexts and goals, because to do so would make them aware of certain things about the universe that would make them feel a kind of emptiness or 'neutrality of emotion' that is usually desirable only in situations where the hamster wants to stop his or her self-perpetuating cycle of negative thinking, in order to fight severe depression or crippling loneliness. In a situation of severe depression or crippling loneliness caused by a period of time of uncontrollable negative thinking this 'kind of emptiness'--effected by an understanding (of the arbitrary nature of the universe) that is attained by thinking comprehensively about context, goals, and meaning--can be used to neutralize the hamster's automatic and self-perpetuating pattern of negative thoughts, at which point the hamster can form new thoughts, that will cause new behaviors, that will cause new patterns of thought, with which the hamster can better function in life and in relationships with other hamsters.

People with an entertaining rigid structure are brought up in environments in which the parents are uncomfortable with expressing feelings. This is not to say that the parents do not care, but they do not express feelings like affection, warmth, and caring or feel comfortable with expressing such feelings (Keleman). The experience within the family is not one of intimacy and true interchange of feeling. To contend with the situation, the child may learn to draw out the parents by being cute, entertaining, or charming. Although being charming is something most children do naturally to some extent, the difference in the case of people with an entertaining rigid structure is that this becomes the primary mode of relating. Furthermore, the entertaining rigid structure pattern is reinforced as the parents respond primarily to the child's charm, rather than to their own feelings. Therefore, such children effectively learn that they will not get the reaction they crave without using that behavior. At the same time, these children are also developing or have developed a discomfort with intimacy that is similar to that of their parents. As a result, people with an entertaining rigid structure as adults act out this pattern in which they are energized or emotionally fed by being able to cause another person to be attracted to them, but they become anxious if the person becomes too close or expresses "real" feeling. Love is what they are really craving, and they think they are getting it, but are not. In other words, they have mistaken the energy of attraction for love.

In so many ways, suffering – when allowed – looks like love. Our cry of suffering is the cry for reunion: it is the calling towards home and the awakening of our True Nature. When we repress that call of suffering – which is the precise music of our healing – we also repress the love.

Therapy, for us, is related to a growth process that takes place naturally in lives and in families. We assume that the will and the need to expand and integrate experience are universal; and the family that enters psychotherapy is simply one in which that natural process has become blocked. Therapy is a catalytic “agent” which we hope will help the family unlock their own resources. Therefore, we place great emphasis on the family’s own initiative, assuming that if they cannot discover their own power to change themselves, therapy will have no enduring effect. Like

There is one true property of romantic love: it never stays - evanescence is a part of the nature of an infatuated love state. But be careful trying to rush its demise. Don't try to joust with love any more than you would with powerful religious beliefs - those are duels you cannot win.

We need ecstasy, which in its Greek sense (ek-stasis) means to be outside the ego. The ego is a prison, caught in time, space and rationality. We need to leave this mental prison behind from time to time, and on a regular basis. What can get us out? Poetry, love, sex, therapy, passion, nature, ritual, ceremony, music, empathy, compassion, and ‘feeling with’ the world. All of these things Jung calls ‘religion’. Religion is anything that provides escape from egocentricity, relief from the mundane, and as such he gives a Dionysian spin to religion, that seems almost contrary to what an archbishop, for instance, might mean by this term.

The sunset and the gentle moon, the blessed motion of the leaves and the murmuring of waters are all sweet physicians to a distempered mind. The soul is expanded and drinks in quiet, a lulling medicine – to me it was as the sight of the lovely water snakes to the bewitched mariner – in loving and blessing Nature I unawares, called down a blessing on my own soul.

On a winter’s day when a person’s spirits may be low and to behold thirty to one-hundred Evening Grosbeaks busily gorging themselves on bird seed and perched in a stand of pines with all of them creating a cacophony of sparrow like chirps, this is real therapy for me. It is an act of contagious optimism. It is at such times I realize that a bird can do more for me than a shrink.

...the work of sexologists and the development of sex therapy are all instances of how men’s power over women was to be supported and managed through the regulation of marital sex. Sex, in this scheme of things, was not a natural and spontaneous seeking after pleasure by men and women, but a regulatory mechanism designed and constructed to enforce male dominance and female submission.

Total seizure control for your goal may not always be wise. Sometimes it is better to contend with an occasional mild seizure than to have the constant debilitating side effects of too much medication. To the best of our knowledge, brief seizures do no brain damage." She stresses the need for the patient to share in the decision and for the physician to remember his oath: "First do no harm.

Our sin is our resistance to going along with God's initiative in making suffering reparative. We are deeply drawn towards God, but we also sense how following him will dislocate and transform beyond recognition the forms which have made life tolerable for us. We often react with fear, dismay, hostility. We are at war with ourselves, and responding differently to this inner conflict, we end up at war with each other. So it is undoubtedly true that the result of sin is much suffering. But this is by no means distributed according to desert. Many who are relatively innocent are swept up in this suffering, and some of the worse offenders get off lightly. The proper response to all this is not retrospective book-keeping, but making ourselves capable of responding to God's initiative. But now if that's what sin is, then one can sympathize with a lot of the modern critique of a religion which focuses on the evil tendencies of human nature, and the need for renunciation and sacrifice. This is not because humans are in fact angelic, or there is no point to sacrifice. It's just that focusing on how bad human beings can be, even if it's to refute the often over-rosy views of secular humanists with their reliance on human malleability and therapy, can only strengthen misanthropy, which certainly won’t bring you closer to God; and propounding sacrifice and renunciation for themselves takes you away from the main points, which is following God's initiative. That this can involve sacrifice, we well know from the charter act in this initiative, but renunciation is not is point.

When a client enters therapy with a prior diagnosis, it might be difficult for the therapist to think outside of the box presented. One reason a dissociative individual might have several different diagnoses, however, is that as different parts present, they may also be presenting with diagnostic issues that are different from the host. Such differences especially make sense given the nature of DID.

Vitamin C is the world’s best natural antibiotic, antiviral, antitoxin and antihistamine. This book’s recurring emphasis on vitamin C might suggest that I am offering a song with only one verse. Not so. As English literature concentrates on Shakespeare, so orthomolecular (megavitamin) therapy concentrates on vitamin C. Let the greats be given their due. The importance of vitamin C cannot be overemphasised.

Everything must be balanced. Nature is balanced. The beasts live in harmony. Humans have not learned to do that. They continue to destroy themselves. There is no harmony, no plan to what they do. It’s so different in nature. Nature is balanced. Nature is energy and life … and restoration. And humans just destroy. They destroy nature. They destroy other humans. They will eventually destroy themselves.” This was an ominous

Back in the 1980s, there was enormous enthusiasm about gene therapy, i.e., repairing broken genes. There are at least 10,000 known genetic diseases afflicting the human race. There was a belief that science would enable us to rewrite the code of life, correcting the mistakes of Mother Nature. There was even talk that gene therapy might be able to enhance the human race as well, improving our health and intelligence at the genetic level.

The most popular antiracist curriculum among conservative evangelicals is Latasha Morrison’s Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation. In the accompanying curriculum, Whiteness 101: Foundational Principles Every White Bridge Builder Needs to Understand, Morrison defines racism as “a system of advantage based on race, involving cultural messages, misuse of power, and institutional bias, in addition to the racist beliefs and actions of individuals.” It is important to note that this redefinition of racism, among other things, changes the location and therefore the nature of the sin. We are no longer dealing with the hearts of men; we are addressing institutions and structures. “For as long as America exists with its current institutions,” writes DiAngelo, “it will also need to be in group therapy where our turn begins with: ‘Hi. I’m America, and I’m racist.’ ”34

What we need is a profound rethinking of the nature of suffering itself, and what it is trying to highlight and ask us to change. We need to repoliticise emotional discontent in the minds of teachers, parents and policy-makers, rather than continue reducing it to dysfunctions that allegedly reside within the self. We need to acknowledge that suffering also reflects family/socio/political dynamics we would do well to better acknowledge and address.

Accepting who we are is a practice of non-harming. Sadly, much self-help literature contains seeds of harm: We are urged to remake ourselves into someone who will be spiritually or psychologically acceptable, and that acceptance is conditional on our performance in the areas of therapy, growth, or meditation. We are still not accepting ourselves unconditionally, just as we are in this moment, with a full and joyful heart. A more merciful practice begins with acceptance. It begins with the assumption that we were never broken, never defective. By surrendering into a deep acceptance of our own nature—rather than by tearing apart who we are—we actually make more room for genuine, rich, merciful, playful growth and change. If we feel our fundamental strength, creativity, and wisdom, then change is not frightening at all. Things simply fall away when they are ready, making room for the rich harvest underneath.

Imperfection is not our personal problem—it is a natural part of existing.” Not being willing to accept imperfection creates imperfection. Inflexible preoccupation with your body shape keeps you struggling around food—and often leads to eating disorders (Fairburn 2008). When you define yourself by your shape and are unwilling to accept certain aspects of the way you are, you are likely to resort to harsh efforts to control your body by restricting your food or by overexercising.

I needed to escape my loneliness. I needed comfort and companionship. I needed certainty and faith and stability. But the truth is that I can’t fix that all now. Instead, I made a commitment to noticing. I made it my job to seek the beauty around me; to witness the little magic shows of nature unveiling in hedgerows and verges and the changing of the seasons. By turning my attention outward and finding places and creatures to love, I found beauty to focus on. I had reasons to stay.

I resolved to come right to the point. "Hello," I said as coldly as possible, "we've got to talk." "Yes, Bob," he said quietly, "what's on your mind?" I shut my eyes for a moment, letting the raging frustration well up inside, then stared angrily at the psychiatrist. "Look, I've been religious about this recovery business. I go to AA meetings daily and to your sessions twice a week. I know it's good that I've stopped drinking. But every other aspect of my life feels the same as it did before. No, it's worse. I hate my life. I hate myself." Suddenly I felt a slight warmth in my face, blinked my eyes a bit, and then stared at him. "Bob, I'm afraid our time's up," Smith said in a matter-of-fact style. "Time's up?" I exclaimed. "I just got here." "No." He shook his head, glancing at his clock. "It's been fifty minutes. You don't remember anything?" "I remember everything. I was just telling you that these sessions don't seem to be working for me." Smith paused to choose his words very carefully. "Do you know a very angry boy named 'Tommy'?" "No," I said in bewilderment, "except for my cousin Tommy whom I haven't seen in twenty years..." "No." He stopped me short. "This Tommy's not your cousin. I spent this last fifty minutes talking with another Tommy. He's full of anger. And he's inside of you." "You're kidding?" "No, I'm not. Look. I want to take a little time to think over what happened today. And don't worry about this. I'll set up an emergency session with you tomorrow. We'll deal with it then." Robert This is Robert speaking. Today I'm the only personality who is strongly visible inside and outside. My own term for such an MPD role is dominant personality. Fifteen years ago, I rarely appeared on the outside, though I had considerable influence on the inside; back then, I was what one might call a "recessive personality." My passage from "recessive" to "dominant" is a key part of our story; be patient, you'll learn lots more about me later on. Indeed, since you will meet all eleven personalities who once roamed about, it gets a bit complex in the first half of this book; but don't worry, you don't have to remember them all, and it gets sorted out in the last half of the book. You may be wondering -- if not "Robert," who, then, was the dominant MPD personality back in the 1980s and earlier? His name was "Bob," and his dominance amounted to a long reign, from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Since "Robert B. Oxnam" was born in 1942, you can see that "Bob" was in command from early to middle adulthood. Although he was the dominant MPD personality for thirty years, Bob did not have a clue that he was afflicted by multiple personality disorder until 1990, the very last year of his dominance. That was the fateful moment when Bob first heard that he had an "angry boy named Tommy" inside of him. How, you might ask, can someone have MPD for half a lifetime without knowing it? And even if he didn't know it, didn't others around him spot it? To outsiders, this is one of the most perplexing aspects of MPD. Multiple personality is an extreme disorder, and yet it can go undetected for decades, by the patient, by family and close friends, even by trained therapists. Part of the explanation is the very nature of the disorder itself: MPD thrives on secrecy because the dissociative individual is repressing a terrible inner secret. The MPD individual becomes so skilled in hiding from himself that he becomes a specialist, often unknowingly, in hiding from others. Part of the explanation is rooted in outside observers: MPD often manifests itself in other behaviors, frequently addiction and emotional outbursts, which are wrongly seen as the "real problem." The fact of the matter is that Bob did not see himself as the dominant personality inside Robert B. Oxnam. Instead, he saw himself as a whole person. In his mind, Bob was merely a nickname for Bob Oxnam, Robert Oxnam, Dr. Robert B. Oxnam, PhD.

Anxiety (loneliness or “abandonment anxiety” being its most painful form) overcomes the person to the extent that he loses orientation in the objective world. To lose the world is to lose one's self, and vice versa; self and world are correlates. The function of anxiety is to destroy the self-world relationship, i.e., to disorient the victim in space and time and, so long as this disorientation lasts, the person remains in the state of anxiety. Anxiety overwhelms the person precisely because of the preservation of this disorientation. Now if the person can reorient himself—as happens, one hopes, in psychotherapy—and again relate himself to the world directly, experientially, with his senses alive, he overcomes the anxiety. My slightly anthropomorphic terminology comes out of my work as a therapist and is not out of place here. Though the patient and I are entirely aware of the symbolic nature of this (anxiety doesn’t do anything, just as libido or sex drives don’t), it is often helpful for the patient to see himself as struggling against an “adversary.” For then, instead of waiting forever for the therapy to analyze away the anxiety, he can help in his own treatment by taking practical steps when he experiences anxiety such as stopping and asking just what it was that occurred in reality or in his fantasies that preceded the disorientation which cued off the anxiety. He is not only opening the doors of his closet where the ghosts hide, but he often can also then take steps to reorient himself in his practical life by making new human relationships and finding new work which interests him.

In newspapers, magazines and on television, the public has been warned off the very vitamins and other supplements that have been repeatedly proven to reduce illness in practically every instance. The effective use of food supplements and natural diet saves money, pain and lives... and you have been told not to do it. If you want something done right you have to do it yourself. This especially includes your healthcare. One of the most common questions about vitamin therapy is, are huge doses safe? This book will help answer that question once and for all, and while we are at it, here’s the answer in advance. Yes. Megadoses of vitamins are very safe. Vitamins do not cause even one death per year. Pharmaceutical drugs, taken as directed, cause over 100 000 deaths annually. Still it is granted that we need access to all the tools that medicine and technology can provide, when used with caution. We must also fully use our natural resources of therapeutic nutrition and vitamins. To limit ourselves to pharmaceutical medicine is like going into the ring to fight the champ with one hand tied behind our backs.

Freud's psychology and the philosophy underlying it are essentially pessimistic. This is patent in his outlook on the future of mankind as well as in his attitude toward therapy. And on the basis of his theoretical premises, he cannot be anything but pessimistic. Man is driven by instincts which at best are only to be modified by "sublimation." His instinctual drives for satisfaction are inevitably frustrated by society. His "ego" is helplessly tossed about between instinctual drives and the "superego," which itself can only be modified. The superego is primarily forbidding and destructive. True ideals do not exist. The wish for personal fulfillment is "narcissistic." Man is by nature destructive and a "deadi instinct" compels him either to destroy others or to suffer. All these theories leave little room for a positive attitude toward change and limit the value of the potentially splendid therapy Freud originated. In contrast, I believe that compulsive trends in neuroses are not instinctual but spring from disturbed human relationships; that they can be changed when these improve and that conflicts of such origin can really be resolved.

While some accused and convicted child molesters have inappropriately influenced the media, the public, and many in the clinical and legal professions by claiming that traumatic amnesia does not occur in child sexual abuse, workers in the field of trauma psychology have accumulated solid empirical evidence over the past 100 years that it does occur and is common. Its existence and natural history are documented throughout the clinical literature. from: Traumatic amnesia: The evolution of our understanding from a clinical and legal perspective, Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity: The Journal of Treatment & Prevention, Volume 4, Issue 2, 1997

In that moment, watching the flock of finches, I was allowing myself to become lost and absorbed in the sights in front of me. In these early days of my interest in birdwatching, I was still burdened by an inability to manage and regulate my mental health. Birdwatching quickly became my escape route and I started to notice that when I was out, on my own, experiencing nature and birds in a personal and intimate way, I was more relaxed than I'd ever been before. My breathing rate slowed and I closed my mind to repetitive thoughts and worries. My only focus was observing birds and learning about them. I was losing myself in birds, in a positive way.

Race-based medicine gives people a morally acceptable reason to hold on to their belief in intrinsic racial difference. They can now talk openly about natural distinctions between races—even their biological inferiority and superiority, at least when it comes to disease—without appearing racist. This would be a case of public enlightenment—“pulling back the covers”—if the science supporting racial therapies were sound. But to the contrary, the purported benefits of racial medicine provide an excuse to overlook the scientific flaws in research claiming to show race-based genetic difference. These technologies are not just products of racial science. They are driving racial science.

What would Buddha do? “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment”, Buddha. Well, while Buddhism contains many valuable life lessons one of the most important is the difference between pain and suffering. Pain is woven into nature and is inevitable part of life: to desire results in disappointment, to love means you will experience loss and to be born naturally leads to aging and death. By contrast suffering is what our minds make up these experiences when they are not at hand. Suffering is the anguish we experience from worry of not getting the things we need or from loosing the things that we have. It is an anticipatory anxiety.

There were inquiries, Congressional hearings, books, exposés and documentaries. However, despite all this attention, it was still only a few short months before interest in these children dropped away. There were criminal trials, civil trials, lots of sound and fury. All of the systems—CPS, the FBI, the Rangers, our group in Houston—returned, in most ways, to our old models and our ways of doing things. But while little changed in our practice, a lot had changed in our thinking. We learned that some of the most therapeutic experiences do not take place in “therapy,” but in naturally occurring healthy relationships, whether between a professional like myself and a child, between an aunt and a scared little girl, or between a calm Texas Ranger and an excitable boy. The children who did best after the Davidian apocalypse were not those who experienced the least stress or those who participated most enthusiastically in talking with us at the cottage. They were the ones who were released afterwards into the healthiest and most loving worlds, whether it was with family who still believed in the Davidian ways or with loved ones who rejected Koresh entirely. In fact, the research on the most effective treatments to help child trauma victims might be accurately summed up this way: what works best is anything that increases the quality and number of relationships in the child’s life.

we were to allow the wonder of the life of a child to reach us fully and truly and to be our teacher, we would have to say: Thank you, child of man…for reminding me about the joy and excitement of being human. Thank you for letting me grow together with you, that I can learn again of what I have forgotten about simplicity, intensity, totality, wonder and love and learn to respect my own life in its uniqueness. Thank you for allowing me to learn from your tears about the pain of growing up and the sufferings of the world. Thank you for showing me that to love another person and to be with people, big or small, is the most natural of gifts that grows like a flower when we live in the wonder of life. (p. 10)

When you are depressed, you may have a tendency to confuse feeling with facts. Your feelings of hopelessness and total despair are just symptoms of depressive illness, not facts. If you think you are hopeless, you will naturally feel this way. Your feelings only trace the illogical pattern of your thinking. Only an expert, who has treated hundreds of depressed individuals, would be in a position to give a meaningful prognosis for recovery. Your suicidal urge merely indicates the need for treatment. Thus, your conviction that you are "hopeless" nearly always proves you are not. Therapy, not suicide, is indicated. Although generalizations can be misleading, I let the following rule of thumb guide me: Patients who feel hopeless never actually are hopeless. The conviction of hopelessness is one of the most curious aspects of depressive illness. In fact, the degree of hopelessness experienced by seriously depressed patients who have an excellent prognosis is usually greater than in terminal malignancy patients with a poor prognosis. It is of great importance to expose the illogic that lurks behind your hopelessness as soon as possible in order to prevent an actual suicide attempt. You may feel convinced that you have an insoluble problem in your life. You may feel that you are caught in a trap from which there is no exit. This may lead to extreme frustration and even to the urge to kill yourself as the only escape.

Consider taking L-tyrosine, vitamin D3, vitamin K2, vitamin A, and zinc supplements to achieve healthy hormone levels. If possible, get your vitamin D and zinc levels tested first to see if yours are low. •​Go through your toiletries and personal care products and get rid of everything containing phthalates and parabens, which mimic hormones in the body and disrupt your natural hormone function. •​If you can, see a functional medicine or anti-aging doctor for a full hormonal workup. If you are deficient in certain hormones and the above advice does not work, explore bioidentical hormone replacement therapy under the care of a trusted physician. •​If you are over forty and have clear signs of low sex hormones, it’s probably safe and likely beneficial to try 25 to 50 mg of DHEA without a lab test.

Patients who develop ME/CFS often lose the natural antidepressant effect of exercise, feeling worse after exercise rather than better. Patients may have a drop in body temperature with exercise. Thus fatigue is correlated with other symptoms, often in a sequence that is unique to each patient. After relatively normal physical or intellectual exertion, a patient may take an inordinate amount of time to regain her/his pre-exertion level of function and competence. For example, a patient who has bought a few groceries may be too exhausted to unpack them until the next day. The reactive fatigue of post-exertional malaise or lack of endurance usually lasts 24 hours or more and is often associated with impairment of cognitive functions. There is often delayed reactivity following exertion, with the onset the next day, or even later.

Even when therapists speak of the need for “meaning” and “love,” they define love and meaning simply as the fulfilment of the patient’s emotional requirements. It hardly occurs to them—nor is there any reason why it should, given the nature of the therapeutic enterprise—to encourage the subject to subordinate his needs and interests to those of others, to someone or some cause or tradition outside himself. “Love” as self-sacrifice or self-abasement, “meaning” as submission to a higher loyalty—these sublimations strike the therapeutic sensibility as intolerably oppressive, offensive to common sense and injurious to personal health and well-being. To liberate humanity from such outmoded ideas of love and duty has become the mission of the post-Freudian therapies and particularly of their converts and popularizers, for whom mental health means the overflow of inhibitions and the immediate gratification of every impulse.

By explaining the precise power that held groups together Freud could also show why groups did not fear danger. The members do not feel that they are alone with their own smallness and helplessness, as they have the powers of the hero-leader with whom they are identified. Natural narcissism-the feeling that the person next to you will die, but not you-is reinforced by trusting dependence on the leader's power. No wonder that hundreds of thousands of men marched up from trenches in the face of blistering gunfire in World War I. They were partially self-hypnotised, so to speak. No wonder men imagine victories against impossible odds: don't they have the omnipotent powers of the parental figure? Why are groups so blind and stupid?-men have always asked. Because they demand illusions, answered Freud, they "constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is real." And we know why. The real world is simply too terrible to admit; it tells man that he is a small, trembling animal who will decay and die. illusion changes all this, makes man seem important, vital to the universe, immortal in some way. Who transmits this illusion, if not the parents by imparting the macro-lie of the cultural causa-sui? The masses look to the leaders to give them just the untruth that they need; the leader continues the illusions that triumph over the castration complex and magnifies them into a truly heroic victory. Furthermore, he makes possible a new experience, the expression of forbidden impulses, secret wishes, and fantasies. In group behavior anything goes because the leader okays it. It is like being an omnipotent infant again, encouraged by the parent to indulge oneself plentifully, or like being in psychoanalytic therapy where the analyst doesn't censure you for anything you feel or think. In the group each man seems an omnipotent hero who can give full vent to his appetites under the approving eye of the father. And so we understand the terrifying sadism of group activity.

Human evolution is not over, but the chances of natural selection adapting our species in dramatic, major ways to common non-infectious mismatch diseases are remote unless conditions change dramatically. One reason is that many of these diseases have little to no effect on fertility. Type 2 diabetes, for example, generally develops after people have reproduced, and even then, it is highly manageable for many years.8 Another consideration is that natural selection can act only on variations that affect reproductive success and that are also genetically passed from parent to offspring. Some obesity-related illnesses can hinder reproductive function, but these problems have strong environmental causes.9 Finally, although culture sometimes spurs selection, it is also a powerful buffer. Every year new products and therapies are being developed that allow people with common mismatch diseases to cope better with their symptoms. Whatever selection is operating is probably occurring at a pace too slow to measure in our lifetimes.

Add Healthy Coping Mechanisms Regardless of how much work we do to heal our root issues, we will always need to deal with life, people, our family, assholes, emotions, pain, disappointment, anxiety, depression, loss, grief, and stress. So we need to not only work on the root causes and break the cycle of addiction, but also to replace our crappy coping mechanisms with healthy and constructive ones. Some examples of healthy coping mechanisms are: breathing techniques, spiritual practices, essential oils, chants and sound therapies, supplements, meditations, positive affirmations, and so on. We need to learn how to incorporate these healthy substitutes—not just know what we “should do.” We need to create an existence where we naturally and impulsively reach for something that builds us up or reinforces us or heals us (a poem or mantra, a meditation, a cup of hot water with lemon) instead of something that just takes us down further (a cigarette, a text to an abusive ex-lover, a bottle of wine, a new pair of shoes we can’t afford).

The word ‘emotion’ comes from the Latin e for exit and motio for movement. So emotion is a natural energy, a dynamic experience that needs to move through and out of the body. As children, however, we are often taught not to express our emotions; for example, we might have been told, ‘boys don’t cry’, or ‘don’t be a baby’. Or when we are angry we are taught that it’s not appropriate to express it: ‘Don’t you dare raise your voice to me!’ At some level most of us are taught that emotions are not OK. As healthy adults, we need to let go of the emotional patterns from the past that mess up our lives and no longer serve us. As Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, often said, ‘The only way out is through.’ It’s not easy, and the vast majority of people deny the symptoms or anaesthetise themselves through work, TV, food, alcohol or some kind of drug. By discharging negative emotions attached to past memories we become more able to respond spontaneously in any given moment, allowing us to be more present in our relationships and to the gifts of the world around us.

We may find ourselves in a role similar to that of a gardener as we cultivate a space in which healing can naturally unfold. In terms of neurobiology, this stance encourages us to lean into the reassuring awareness that our systems already contain seeds awaiting our attention. For some examples, we humans are always seeking the warmest possible attachments we can imagine (Cozolino, Siegel), our brains are continuously yearning for the arrival of a co-organizing other (Badenoch, Cozolino, Schore), emotional regulation flows naturally from being in the presence of someone we trust (Beckes & Coan) and even our nervous systems have a preference for the social engagement circuitry that sustains connection (Porges). With this kind of support from the biology inherent in both practitioner and patient, our bodies may begin to open into a welcoming state as others come towards us, with a sense of partnership being established rather than someone doing something to us. However this also means letting go of the potential certainty that comes from feeling we are in charge.

The Pathe & Mullen (1997) sample almost unanimously reported deterioration in mental and physical well-being as a consequence of the harassment. (..) These victims often described a preoccupation with their stalker, one commenting: "I think I’ve become as obsessed as the stalker himself". (..) Whenever stalking victims present it is essential to assess their suicide potential and continue to monitor this. (..) Victims of stalking often respond to cognitive-orientated psychological therapies because stalking breaches previously held assumptions about their safety. The belief of victims in their strength and resilience and their confidence in the reasonable and predictable nature of the world are frequently shattered, to be replaced with feelings of extreme vulnerability and an expectation of pervasive danger and unpredictable harm. Cognitive therapies attempt to restructure these morbid perceptions of the world that threaten the victim’s adaptation and functioning. (..) Avoidance can respond to behavioural therapies such as prolonged exposure and stress inoculation, which aim to assist victims to gradually resume abandoned activities and manage the associated anxiety.

Why had the introduction of a supposedly harmless virus carrying a gene into the liver caused such a devastating, fatal reaction? As physicians, scientists, and regulators sifted through the trial, the reasons for the failed experiment became evident. The vectors used to infect Gelsinger's cells had never been properly vetted in humans. But most important, Gelsinger's immune response to the virus should have been anticipated. Gelsinger had likely been naturally exposed to the strain of adenovirus that had been used in the gene-therapy experiment. His brisk immune response was not an aberration; it was the perfectly habitual response of a body fighting a pathogen that it had previously encountered, possibly during infection by a cold. In choosing a common human virus as their vehicle for gene delivery, gene therapists had made a crucial error of judgment: they had neglected to consider that genes were being delivered into a human body with a history, with scars, memories, and prior exposures. "How could such a beautiful thing go so, so wrong?" Paul Gelsinger had asked. We now know how: because-seeking only beauty-scientists were unprepared for catastrophe. The doctors pushing the frontiers of human medicine had forgotten to account for the common cold.

The problems which the integration of the unconscious sets modern doctors and psychologists can only be solved along the lines traced out by history, and the upshot will be a new assimilation of the traditional myth. This, however, presupposes the continuity of historical development. Naturally the present tendency to destroy all tradition or render it unconscious could interrupt the normal process of development for several hundred years and substitute an interlude of barbarism. Wherever the Marxist utopia prevails, this has already happened. But a predominantly scientific and technological education, such as is the usual thing nowadays, can also bring about a spiritual regression and a considerable increase of psychic dissociation. With hygiene and prosperity alone a man is still far from health, otherwise the most enlightened and most comfortably off among us would be the healthiest. But in regard to neuroses that is not the case at all, quite the contrary. Loss of roots and lack of tradition neuroticize the masses and prepare them for collective hysteria. Collective hysteria calls for collective therapy, which consists in abolition of liberty and terrorization. Where rationalistic materialism holds sway, states tend to develop less into prisons than into lunatic asylums.

We’ve become so focused as a society on the question of whether a given sexual behavior is evolutionarily “natural” or “unnatural” that we’ve lost sight of the more important question: Is it harmful? In many ways, it’s an even more challenging question, because although naturalness can be assessed by relatively straightforward queries about statistical averages—for example, “How frequently does it appear in other species?” and “In what percentage of the human population does it occur?”—the experience of harm is largely subjective. As such, it defies such direct analyses and requires definitions that resonate with people in vastly different ways. When it comes to sexual harm in particular, what’s harmful to one person not only is completely harmless to another but may even, believe it or not, be helpful or positive. If the supermodel Kate Upton were to walk into my office right now and tie me to my chair before doing a slow striptease and depositing her vagina in my face, I think I’d require therapy for years. But if this identical event were to happen to my heterosexual brother or to one of my lesbian friends, I suspect their brains would process such a “tragic” experience very differently. (And that of my not-very-amused sister-in-law would see my brother’s encounter with said vagina differently still.)

In a therapy session, the only labels the horses get are the ones the client gives them.” “So you wouldn’t want me to notice that the Palomino horse, the one with the white mane and the tan body, looks like you and that she’s always making a nuisance of herself?” “Sackett?” I was outraged on Sackett’s behalf more than my own. “Sackett isn’t annoying! And Sackett’s a he, which just proves my point about pre-conceived ideas. If you knew he was a he and not a she, you wouldn’t be able to label him as Georgia and say mean things. Sackett is wise! Whenever things get really deep, you can always count on Sackett being right in the thick of things.” I heard the affront in my voice and I glowered at Moses for a moment before launching my own attack. “And Lucky is just like you!” I said. Moses just stared at me blandly, but I could tell he was enjoying himself. “Because he’s black?” “No, stupid. Because he’s in love with me, and he tries to pretend every day like he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,” I shot back. Moses choked, and I punched him hard in the stomach, making him gasp and grab for my hands. “So you want the clients to not pay any attention to the color of the horse. That’s not even human nature, you know.” Moses pinned my hands over my head and stared down into my flushed face. When he could see I wasn’t going to continue punching he relaxed his hold, but he looked back toward the horses and continued talking.

The Blue Mind Rx Statement Our wild waters provide vast cognitive, emotional, physical, psychological, social, and spiritual values for people from birth, through adolescence, adulthood, older age, and in death; wild waters provide a useful, widely available, and affordable range of treatments healthcare practitioners can incorporate into treatment plans. The world ocean and all waterways, including lakes, rivers, and wetlands (collectively, blue space), cover over 71% of our planet. Keeping them healthy, clean, accessible, and biodiverse is critical to human health and well-being. In addition to fostering more widely documented ecological, economic, and cultural diversities, our mental well-being, emotional diversity, and resiliency also rely on the global ecological integrity of our waters. Blue space gives us half of our oxygen, provides billions of people with jobs and food, holds the majority of Earth's biodiversity including species and ecosystems, drives climate and weather, regulates temperature, and is the sole source of hydration and hygiene for humanity throughout history. Neuroscientists and psychologists add that the ocean and wild waterways are a wellspring of happiness and relaxation, sociality and romance, peace and freedom, play and creativity, learning and memory, innovation and insight, elation and nostalgia, confidence and solitude, wonder and awe, empathy and compassion, reverence and beauty — and help manage trauma, anxiety, sleep, autism, addiction, fitness, attention/focus, stress, grief, PTSD, build personal resilience, and much more. Chronic stress and anxiety cause or intensify a range of physical and mental afflictions, including depression, ulcers, colitis, heart disease, and more. Being on, in, and near water can be among the most cost-effective ways of reducing stress and anxiety. We encourage healthcare professionals and advocates for the ocean, seas, lakes, and rivers to go deeper and incorporate the latest findings, research, and insights into their treatment plans, communications, reports, mission statements, strategies, grant proposals, media, exhibits, keynotes, and educational programs and to consider the following simple talking points: •Water is the essence of life: The ocean, healthy rivers, lakes, and wetlands are good for our minds and bodies. •Research shows that nature is therapeutic, promotes general health and well-being, and blue space in both urban and rural settings further enhances and broadens cognitive, emotional, psychological, social, physical, and spiritual benefits. •All people should have safe access to salubrious, wild, biodiverse waters for well-being, healing, and therapy. •Aquatic biodiversity has been directly correlated with the therapeutic potency of blue space. Immersive human interactions with healthy aquatic ecosystems can benefit both. •Wild waters can serve as medicine for caregivers, patient families, and all who are part of patients’ circles of support. •Realization of the full range and potential magnitude of ecological, economic, physical, intrinsic, and emotional values of wild places requires us to understand, appreciate, maintain, and improve the integrity and purity of one of our most vital of medicines — water.

Wake up every day, expecting not to know what's going to happen, and look for the events to unfold with curiosity. Instead of stressing and managing, just be present at anything that pops up with the intention of approaching it with your best efforts. Whatever happens in the process of spiritual awakening is going to be unpredictable and moving forward, if you're just the one who notices it, not fighting or making a big project out there. •       You may have emotional swings, energetic swings, psychic openings, and other unwanted shifts that, as you knew, feel unfamiliar to your personality. Be the beholder. Don't feel like you have something to fix or alter. They're going to pass. •       If you have severe trauma in your history and have never had therapy, it might be very useful to release the pains of memories that arise around the events. Therapy teaches you how to express, bear witness, release, and move forward. Your therapist needn't know much about kundalini as long as he or she doesn't discount that part of your process. What you want to focus on is the release of trauma-related issues, and you want an experienced and compassionate therapist who sees your spiritual orientation as a motivation and support for the healing process. •       This process represents your chance to wake up to your true nature. Some people wake up first, and then experience the emergence of a kundalini; others have the kundalini process going through as a preparation for the emergence. The appearance happens to do the job of wiping out, so is part of either pattern. Waking up means realizing that whoever looks through your eyes, lives through your senses, listens to your thoughts, and is present at every moment of your experience, whether good or bad, is recognized or remembered. This is a bright, conscious, detached and unconditionally loving presence that is universal and eternal and is totally free from all the conditions and memories you associate with as a personal identity. But as long as you believe in all of your personal conditions and stories, emotions, and thoughts, you have to experience life filtered by them. This programmed mind is what makes the game of life to be varied and suspense-filled but it also causes suffering and fear of death. When we are in Samadhi and Satori encounters, we glimpse the Truth about the vast, limitless space that is the foundation for our being. It is called gnosis (knowledge) or the One by the early Gnostics. Some spiritual teachings like Advaita Vedanta and Zen go straight for realization, while others see it as a gradual path through years of spiritual practices. Anyway, the ending is the same. As Shakespeare said, when you know who you are, the world becomes a stage and you the player, and life is more light and thoughts less intrusive, and the kundalini process settles down into a mellow pleasantness. •       Give up places to go and to be with people that cause you discomfort.

REPROGRAMMING MY BIOCHEMISTRY A common attitude is that taking substances other than food, such as supplements and medications, should be a last resort, something one takes only to address overt problems. Terry and I believe strongly that this is a bad strategy, particularly as one approaches middle age and beyond. Our philosophy is to embrace the unique opportunity we have at this time and place to expand our longevity and human potential. In keeping with this health philosophy, I am very active in reprogramming my biochemistry. Overall, I am quite satisfied with the dozens of blood levels I routinely test. My biochemical profile has steadily improved during the years that I have done this. For boosting antioxidant levels and for general health, I take a comprehensive vitamin-and-mineral combination, alpha lipoic acid, coenzyme Q10, grapeseed extract, resveratrol, bilberry extract, lycopene, silymarin (milk thistle), conjugated linoleic acid, lecithin, evening primrose oil (omega-6 essential fatty acids), n-acetyl-cysteine, ginger, garlic, l-carnitine, pyridoxal-5-phosphate, and echinacea. I also take Chinese herbs prescribed by Dr. Glenn Rothfeld. For reducing insulin resistance and overcoming my type 2 diabetes, I take chromium, metformin (a powerful anti-aging medication that decreases insulin resistance and which we recommend everyone over 50 consider taking), and gymnema sylvestra. To improve LDL and HDL cholesterol levels, I take policosanol, gugulipid, plant sterols, niacin, oat bran, grapefruit powder, psyllium, lecithin, and Lipitor. To improve blood vessel health, I take arginine, trimethylglycine, and choline. To decrease blood viscosity, I take a daily baby aspirin and lumbrokinase, a natural anti-fibrinolytic agent. Although my CRP (the screening test for inflammation in the body) is very low, I reduce inflammation by taking EPA/DHA (omega-3 essential fatty acids) and curcumin. I have dramatically reduced my homocysteine level by taking folic acid, B6, and trimethylglycine (TMG), and intrinsic factor to improve methylation. I have a B12 shot once a week and take a daily B12 sublingual. Several of my intravenous therapies improve my body’s detoxification: weekly EDTA (for chelating heavy metals, a major source of aging) and monthly DMPS (to chelate mercury). I also take n-acetyl-l-carnitine orally. I take weekly intravenous vitamins and alpha lipoic acid to boost antioxidants. I do a weekly glutathione IV to boost liver health. Perhaps the most important intravenous therapy I do is a weekly phosphatidylcholine (PtC) IV, which rejuvenates all of the body’s tissues by restoring youthful cell membranes. I also take PtC orally each day, and I supplement my hormone levels with DHEA and testosterone. I take I-3-C (indole-3-carbinol), chrysin, nettle, ginger, and herbs to reduce conversion of testosterone into estrogen. I take a saw palmetto complex for prostate health. For stress management, I take l-theonine (the calming substance in green tea), beta sitosterol, phosphatidylserine, and green tea supplements, in addition to drinking 8 to 10 cups of green tea itself. At bedtime, to aid with sleep, I take GABA (a gentle, calming neuro-transmitter) and sublingual melatonin. For brain health, I take acetyl-l-carnitine, vinpocetine, phosphatidylserine, ginkgo biloba, glycerylphosphorylcholine, nextrutine, and quercetin. For eye health, I take lutein and bilberry extract. For skin health, I use an antioxidant skin cream on my face, neck, and hands each day. For digestive health, I take betaine HCL, pepsin, gentian root, peppermint, acidophilus bifodobacter, fructooligosaccharides, fish proteins, l-glutamine, and n-acetyl-d-glucosamine. To inhibit the creation of advanced glycosylated end products (AGEs), a key aging process, I take n-acetyl-carnitine, carnosine, alpha lipoic acid, and quercetin. MAINTAINING A POSITIVE “HEALTH SLOPE” Most important,