Therapeutic Nature Quotes

In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. For example, eating 10 raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death. Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within the supervised routine of medical care. [DEA Administrative Law Judge - 1988]

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.

To the desert go prophets and hermits; through desert go pilgrims and exiles. Here the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality.

We are all self-absorbed, locked in our own worlds. It is a therapeutic and liberating experience to be drawn outside ourselves and into the world of another.

The terrible truth about depression, and the part of its nature that terrifies me the most, is that it appears to operate beyond reason; feelings happen to you for no apparent cause. Or rather, there is usually an initial cause, a 'trigger'as they say in therapeutic circles, but in severe depression the feelings of sadness, grief, loneliness and despair continue long after the situation has resolved itself. It is as if depression has a life of its own, which is perhaps why so many sufferers refer to it as a living thing, as some sort of demon or beast.

Beauty Is the fume-track of necessity. This thought Is therapeutic. If, after several Applications, you do not find Relief, consult your family physician

There is something oddly therapeutic about trudging through marshy sand, the feeling of squishiness below the feet signaling to the brain that it's OK to just let go for a while.

Fighting the Blues with Greens Here’s a statistic you probably haven’t heard: Higher consumption of vegetables may cut the odds of developing depression by as much as 62 percent.26 A review in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience concluded that, in general, eating lots of fruits and veggies may present “a non-invasive, natural, and inexpensive therapeutic means to support a healthy brain.

It is very important that you understand the true innocence of all feelings, for each of them, if left alone and followed, will lead you back to the reality of love . -In their way the hateful or revengeful thoughts are natural therapeutic devices, for if you follow them, accepting them with their own validity as feelings, they will automatically lead you beyond themselves; they will change into other feelings, carrying you from hatred into ... fear - which is always behind hatred. (1 1;220-22 1) 2. Regardless of what you have been told, hatred does not initiate strong violence ... The outbreak of violence is often the result of a built-in sense of powerlessness. (21;418) 3. There are adults who quail when one of their children say, "I hate you'. Often children quickly learn not to be honest. What the child is really saying is, “I love you so. Why are you so mean to me?' or 'What stands between us and the love for you that I feel?' (21;423)4. You become conditioned so that you feel guilty when you even contemplate hating another. You try to hide such thoughts from yourself. You may succeed so well that you literally do not know what you are feeling on a conscious level. The emotions are there but they are invisible to you because you are afraid to look. To that extent you are divorced from your own reality and disconnected from your own feelings of love. (21;424) 5. Even your hateful fantasies, left alone, will return you to a reconciliation and release of love. A fantasy of beating a parent or a child, even to death, will if followed through lead to tears of love and understanding. (2 1;424) 6. You may love a parent, and if the parent does not seem to return the love...you may 'hate' the parent .... Hatred is not a denial of love then but an attempt to regain it

In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. . . . Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. — FRANCIS YOUNG, ADMINISTRATIVE LAW JUDGE, DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION

Breath control is crucial to most of the contemplative traditions... Qur'anic reciters chant long phrases for meditation. It is natural for the audience to adjust their breathing too and find that this has a calming, therapeutic effect, which enables them to grasp the more elusive teachings of the text.

The neurotic exhausts himself not only in self-preoccupations like hypochondrial fears and all sorts of fantasies, but also in others: those around him on whom he is dependent become his therapeutic work project; he takes out his subjective problems on them. But people are not clay to be molded; they have needs and counter-wills of their own. The neurotic's frustration as a failed artist can't be remedied by anything but an objective creative work of his own. Another way of looking at it is to say that the more totally one takes in the world as a problem, the more inferior or "bad" one is going to feel inside oneself. He can try to work out this "badness" by striving for perfection, and then the neurotic symptom becomes his "creative" work; or he can try to make himself perfect by means his partner. But it is obvious to us that the only way to work on perfection is in the form of an objective work that is fully under your control and is perfectible in some real ways. Either you eat up yourself and others around you, trying for perfection; or you objectify that imperfection in a work, on which you then unleash your creative powers. In this sense, some kind of objective creativity is the only answer man has to the problem of life. In this way he satisfies nature, which asks that he live and act objectively as a vital animal plunging into the world; but he also satisfies his own distinctive human nature because he plunges in on his own symbolic terms and not as a reflex of the world as given to mere physical sense experience. He takes in the world, makes a total problem out of it, and then gives out a fashioned, human answer to that problem. This, as Goethe saw in Faust, is the highest that man can achieve.

Even if you are not a religious person by nature or training—even if you are an out-and-out skeptic—prayer can help you much more than you believe, for it is a practical thing. What do I mean, practical? I mean that prayer fulfills these three very basic psychological needs which all people share, whether they believe in God or not: 1. Prayer helps us to put into words exactly what is troubling us. We saw in Chapter 4 that it is almost impossible to deal with a problem while it remains vague and nebulous. Praying, in a way, is very much like writing our problems down on paper. If we ask help for a problem—even from God—we must put it into words. 2. Prayer gives us a sense of sharing our burdens, of not being alone. Few of us are so strong that we can bear our heaviest burdens, our most agonizing troubles, all by ourselves. Sometimes our worries are of so ultimate a nature that we cannot discuss them even with our closest relatives or friends. Then prayer is the answer. Any psychiatrist will tell us that when we are pent-up and tense, and in an agony of spirit, it is therapeutically good to tell someone our troubles. When we can’t tell anyone else—we can always tell God. 3. Prayer puts into force an active principle of doing. It’s a first step toward action. I doubt if anyone can pray for some fulfillment, day after day, without benefiting from it—in other words, without taking some steps to bring it to pass. The world-famous scientist, Dr. Alexis Carrel, said: “Prayer is the most powerful form of energy one can generate.” So why not make use of it? Call it God or Allah or Spirit—why quarrel with definitions as long as the mysterious powers of nature take us in hand?

Boys today bear the burden of several powerful cultural trends: a therapeutic approach to education that valorizes feelings and denigrates competition and risk, zero-tolerance policies that punish normal antics of young males, and a gender equity movement that views masculinity as predatory. Natural male exuberance is no longer tolerated.

you say the right thing at the right moment. But you have no business knowing it ahead of time because as surely as you know it consciously, you start to improve on it and ruin it.

We never fell ill, not once during one year in the U.S. national parks--perhaps proof of the therapeutic properties of our natural world.

The terrible truth about depression, and the part of its nature that terrifies me the most, is that it appears to operate beyond reason; feelings happen to you for no apparent cause. Or rather, there is usually an initial cause, a ‘trigger’ as they say in therapeutic circles, but in severe depression the feelings of sadness, grief, loneliness and despair continue long after the situation has resolved itself. It is as if depression has a life of its own, which is perhaps why so many sufferers refer to it as a living thing, as some sort of demon or beast.

Wetiko is a parasitic spirit or thought-form. It is highly destructive and is motivated by greed, selfishness and excessive consumption. It infects people like a virus, literally possessing them. Once it has taken hold of someone, it deludes them into thinking that consuming the life-force and energy of others for self-aggrandisement or profit is a natural and admirable way to live, and steers them into living a predatory and parasitic lifestyle; essentially, cannibalising other people and the planet.

Trance helps depotentiate our old programs and gives us an opportunity to learn something new. The only reason why we cannot produce an anesthesia at will, for example, is because we don’t know how to give up our habitual generalized reality orientation that emphasizes the importance of pain and gives it primacy in consciousness. But if we allowed young children to experiment with their sensory perceptual processes in a fun way, they might easily develop skills with anaesthesia that could be very useful when they needed it. This would be an interesting piece of research, indeed.

Jung says, “Here one may ask, perhaps, why it is so desirable that a man should be individuated. Not only is it desirable, it is absolutely indispensable because through his contamination with others he falls into situations and commits actions that bring him into disharmony with himself. From all states of unconscious contamination and non-differentiation, there is begotten a compulsion to be and to act in a way contrary to one’s own nature...For these reasons individuation is indispensable for certain people, not only as a therapeutic necessity, but as a high ideal, an idea of the best we can do. Nor should I omit to remark that it is at the same time the primitive Christian ideal of the Kingdom of Heaven that ‘is within you.’ The idea at the bottom of this ideal is that right action comes from right thinking, and there is no cure and no improving of the world that does not begin with the individual himself.

The creative writing teacher was horrified at the thought that she was teaching a pack of insipient arsonists—or Lord of the Flies sociopaths. In fact, they were just boys. But, increasingly, in our schools and in our homes, everyday boyishness is seen as aberrational, toxic—a pathology in need of a cure. Boys today bear the burden of several powerful cultural trends: a therapeutic approach to education that valorizes feelings and denigrates competition and risk, zero-tolerance policies that punish normal antics of young males, and a gender equity movement that views masculinity as predatory. Natural male exuberance is no longer tolerated.

You have been fine-tuned over millions of years to desire to be in harmony with the natural world, to be curious about your own mind, and to recognize the essential unity of which you are a part. Whether or not you ever choose to use psychedelic experiences as part of your self-discovery, your decision should be an informed one.

Will is underrated as a therapeutic agent, an instrument of transformation and self-determination – sometimes the only tool a person can call upon in extremis. There is nothing natural or spontaneous about it. To make a blessing out of a curse is a genuine triumph of will, and transforming shame into pride a rare form of alchemy.

White, green, and blue, the colors of winter that have predominated for at least four months, cede the stage to brown. Much has been written about the therapeutic properties of green and blue, but plugs for brown are scant. The snow's disappearance amounts to the emotional equivalent of a plastic surgery gone bad. When the gauze is unwrapped, the patient sees the result and is horror stricken.

Born of antimodern sentiment, the summer camp was ultimately a modern phenomenon, a "therapeutic space" as much dependent on the city, the factory, and "progress" to define its parameters as on that intangible but much lauded entity called nature. In short, the summer camp should best be read not as a simple rejection of modern life, but, rather, as one of the complex negotiations of modernity taking place in mid-twentieth century Canada.

For Montaigne, this old trick (he borrowed it from the ancient Epicureans) was more than just a therapeutic tool. It was the very foundation of philosophical wisdom. By expecting too much of ourselves, he thought, and trying to remain in control of every experience, we actually undermine that control. We lose contact with our nature, and thus we lose our ability to understand or judge situations correctly. This makes us foolish as well as miserable.

At some time during the process, [of writing] I came up with a therapeutic device. After each draft I would tear up the pages and feed the paper to a worm compost I keep in my garage. A few months later, those painful pages were dirt that nourished my yard, which I could walk with bare feet. It was a real and tangible connection to that larger immensity. I liked to remind myself that the same process is going to happen to me when I'm done, when I die and nature tears me up...

In October 1995 the President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments reported that secret radiation experiments on indigent patients and mentally retarded children were not only done, but that these people were deceived about the nature of their treatments. Dr. William Silverman asserted that performing non-therapeutic experiments on children without authorization from parents was part of a broader "ethos of the time" in which "everyone was a draftee" in a national war on disease.

The political class has adopted inclusiveness and diversity as a political instrument, as a means of controlling a society it has set about reshaping. The “diversity machine” is a mechanism of state power that operates without anyone being permitted to notice its coercive nature. Therapeutic regimes are packaged in a way that disguises their resort to force; both the Left and establishment Right in the United States, which misrepresent political life, have helped to make this concealment possible.

In a different room, but comparable to the first, subjects were met individually, and it was explained that they were to seat themselves comfortably with their hands in their lap in a chair before a writing table on which was a pad of paper and a pencil. They were to look continuously at the pencil until their hand picked it up and started to write involuntarily. They were to concentrate secondarily on the lifting of the hand and primarily on seeing the pencil begin to write, and to do nothing more.

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.

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.

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.

But when we activate trauma memories and our stress-response systems in ways that offer controllability and predictability, we can begin to heal a sensitized system. Healing takes place when there are dozens of therapeutic moments available each day for the person to control, revisiting and reworking their traumatic experience. When you have friends, family, and other healthy people in your life, you have a natural healing environment. We heal best in community. Creating a network—a village, whatever you want to call it—gives you opportunities to revisit trauma in moderate, controllable doses. That pattern of stress activation will ultimately lead to a more regulated stress-reactivity curve (see Figure 5). So the traumatized person with a sensitized stress response can become “neurotypical”—less sensitized, less vulnerable. In fact, they can ultimately develop the capacity to demonstrate resilience. The journey from traumatized to typical to resilient helps create a unique strength and perspective. That journey can create post traumatic wisdom.

DIET FOR LONGEVITY Avoid all junk food and salty, fried, and fatty foods. Stay away from meat, alcohol, coffee, caffeine, and sugar. Check for food sensitivities, particularly wheat and dairy. Therapeutic foods include cilantro, onion, seaweeds, and ginger, which help bind and excrete heavy metals. SUPPLEMENTS FOR LONGEVITY ReMag: (Picometer-ionic)150 mg 2–3 times a day and/or Magnesium citrate: 300 mg two times per day Magnesium oil applied to the skin (don’t rub in), 10–20 sprays per day (each spray carries about 20 mg of magnesium). Calcium: dietary and/or bone broth, 700mg (see this page for food lists and this page for bone broth recipe) ReLyte: Mineral-Electrolyte Solution. ½ tsp three times a day Vitamin E as mixed tocopherols: 400 IU daily Vitamin C: 1,000 mg twice per day Vitamin B complex: 2 per day. Food-based, Grown by Nature Vitamin B12: 1,000 mcg intramuscularly weekly Vitamin D, A, and K2 from Blue Ice Royal (fermented cod liver oil and butter oil: 2 capsules per day) Vitamin D: 20 minutes of sun exposure daily if possible Lecithin granules: 2 tbsp per day Flaxseed oil: 1–2 tbsp per day Ginkgo biloba and gotu kola are two herbs that can improve cerebral circulation.

Crying is therapeutic Most people can relate to the calming and stress reducing effect of a “good cry.” Grieving children should be supported in their need to cry. Unfortunately, children sometimes suppress their tears, thinking that they can control their pain if they control their crying. Parents may find their child’s pain very stressful or threatening and may therefore knowingly or unknowingly suppress natural expressions of grief. They may try to distract the child by promising a treat if he stops crying; cutting the feelings short (“Hush, hush”); minimizing the feelings (“You’re OK now”); contradicting his reality (“You’re going to love it here”); criticizing (“Stop making such a fuss”); embarrassing (“You’re too big to act like such a baby”); or threatening (“Stop it right now or I’ll give you something to cry about”). Crying should be supported with empathy and nurturing. It might be helpful to say something like, “I can tell that you are feeling very bad. Maybe it is because we were just looking at pictures of Nana, and you’re thinking about her now and missing her. Let’s sit here together for a while and I’ll rub your back.” Don’t rush the toddler’s grief before she is ready to let go of it. When the crying has subsided, offer a cold glass of juice or a walk outside. Often, children are more receptive to being cuddled, making eye contact, and other attachment strategies after an episode of acute sadness.

A rogue who has been condemned to death by the tribunal says he wants to resist oppression simply because he wants to resist the scaffold!" Saint-Just's indignation is hard to understand in that, until his time, the scaffold was precisely nothing else but one of the most obvious symbols of oppression. But at the heart of this logical delirium, at the logical conclusion of this morality of virtue, the scaffold represents freedom. It assures rational unity, and harmony in the ideal city. It purifies (the word is apt) the Republic and eliminates malpractices that arise to contradict the general will and universal reason. "They question my right to the title of philanthropist," Marat exclaims, in quite a different style. "Ah, what injustice! Who cannot see that I want to cut off a few heads to save a great number?" A few—a faction? Naturally—and all historic actions are performed at this price. But Marat, making his final calculations, claimed two hundred and seventy-three thousand heads. But he compromised the therapeutic aspect of the operation by screaming during the massacre: "Brand them with hot irons, cut off their thumbs, tear out their tongues." This philanthropist wrote day and night, in the most monotonous vocabulary imaginable, of the necessity of killing in order to create. He wrote again, by candlelight deep down in his cellar, during the September nights while his henchmen were installing spectators' benches in prison courtyards—men on the right, women on the left—to display to them, as a gracious example of philanthropy, the spectacle of the aristocrats having their heads cut off.

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.

Should you operate upon your clients as objects, you risk reducing them to less than human. Following the culture of appropriation and mastery your clients become a kind of extension of yourself, of your ego. In the appropriation and objectification mode, your clients’ well-being and success in treatment reflect well upon you. You “did” something to them, you made them well. You acted upon them and can take the credit for successful therapy or treatment. Conversely, if your clients flounder or regress, that reflects poorly on you. On this side of things the culture of appropriation and mastery says that you are not doing enough. You are not exerting enough influence, technique or therapeutic force. What anxiety this can breed for some clinicians! DBT offers a framework and tools for a treatment that allows clients to retain their full humanity. Through the practice of mindfulness, you can learn to cultivate a fuller presence to the moments of your life, and even with your clients and your work with them. This presence potentiates an encounter between two irreducible human beings, meeting professionally, of course, and meeting humanly. The dialectical framework, which embraces contradictions and gives you a way of seeing that life is pregnant with creative tensions, allows for your discovery of your limits and possibilities, gives you a way of seeing the dynamic nature of reality that is anything but sitting still; shows you that your identity grows from relationship with others, including those you help, that you are an irreducible human being encountering other irreducible human beings who exert influence upon you, even as you exert your own upon them. Even without clinical contrivance.

Of special concern to restorative justice are the needs of crime victims that are not being adequately met by the criminal justice system. Victims often feel ignored, neglected, or even abused by the justice process. This results in part from the legal definition of crime, which does not include victims. Crime is defined as against the state, so the state takes the place of the victims. Yet victims often have a number of specific needs from the justice process. Due to the legal definition of crime and the nature of the criminal justice process, the following four types of needs seem to be especially neglected: 1. Information. Victims need answers to questions they have about the offense—why it happened and what has happened since. They need real information, not speculation or the legally constrained information that comes from a trial or plea agreement. Securing real information usually requires direct or indirect access to offenders who hold this information. 2. Truth-telling. An important element in healing or transcending the experience of crime is an opportunity to tell the story of what happened. Indeed, it is often important for a victim to be able to retell this many times. There are good therapeutic reasons for this. Part of the trauma of crime is the way it upsets our views of ourselves and our world, our life-stories. Transcendence of these experiences means “restorying” our lives by telling the stories in significant settings, often where they can receive public acknowledgment. Often, too, it is important for victims to tell their stories to the ones who caused the harm and to have them understand the impact of their actions. 3. Empowerment. Victims often feel like control has been taken away from them by the offenses they’ve experienced—control over their properties, their bodies, their emotions, their dreams. Involvement in their own cases as they go through the justice process can be an important way to return a sense of empowerment to them. 4. Restitution or vindication. Restitution by offenders is often important to victims, sometimes because of the actual losses, but just as importantly, because of the symbolic recognition restitution implies. When an offender makes an effort to make right the harm, even if only partially, it is a way of saying “I am taking responsibility, and you are not to blame.” Restitution, in fact, is a symptom or sign of a more basic need, the need for vindication. While the concept of vindication is beyond the scope of this booklet, I am convinced that it is a basic need that we all have when we are treated unjustly. Restitution is one of a number of ways of meeting this need to even the score. Apology may also contribute to this need to have one’s harm recognized.

Land and Sea The brilliant colors are the first thing that strike a visitor to the Greek Isles. From the stunning azure waters and blindingly white houses to the deep green-black of cypresses and the sky-blue domes of a thousand churches, saturated hues dominate the landscape. A strong, constant sun brings out all of nature’s colors with great intensity. Basking in sunshine, the Greek Isles enjoy a year-round temperate climate. Lemons grow to the size of grapefruits and grapes hang in heavy clusters from the vines of arbors that shade tables outside the tavernas. The silver leaves of olive trees shiver in the least sea breezes. The Greek Isles boast some of the most spectacular and diverse geography on Earth. From natural hot springs to arcs of soft-sand beaches and secret valleys, the scenery is characterized by dramatic beauty. Volcanic formations send craggy cliffsides plummeting to the sea, cause lone rock formations to emerge from blue waters, and carve beaches of black pebbles. In the Valley of the Butterflies on Rhodes, thousands of radiant winged creatures blanket the sky in summer. Crete’s Samaria Gorge is the longest in Europe, a magnificent natural wonder rife with local flora and fauna. Corfu bursts with lush greenery and wildflowers, nurtured by heavy rainfall and a sultry sun. The mountain ranges, gorges, and riverbeds on Andros recall the mainland more than the islands. Both golden beaches and rocky countrysides make Mykonos distinctive. Around Mount Olympus, in central Cyprus, timeless villages emerge from the morning mist of craggy peaks and scrub vegetation. On Evia and Ikaria, natural hot springs draw those seeking the therapeutic power of healing waters. Caves abound in the Greek Isles; there are some three thousand on Crete alone. The Minoans gathered to worship their gods in the shallow caves that pepper the remotest hilltops and mountain ranges. A cave near the town of Amnissos, a shrine to Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, once revealed a treasure trove of small idols dedicated to her. Some caves were later transformed into monasteries. On the islands of Halki and Cyprus, wall paintings on the interiors of such natural monasteries survive from the Middle Ages. Above ground, trees and other flora abound on the islands in a stunning variety. ON Crete, a veritable forest of palm trees shades the beaches at Vai and Preveli, while the high, desolate plateaus of the interior gleam in the sunlight. Forest meets sea on the island of Poros, and on Thasos, many species of pine coexist. Cedars, cypress, oak, and chestnut trees blanket the mountainous interiors of Crete, Cyprus, and other large islands. Rhodes overflows with wildflowers during the summer months. Even a single island can be home to disparate natural wonders. Amorgos’ steep, rocky coastline gives way to tranquil bays. The scenery of Crete--the largest of the Greek Isles--ranges from majestic mountains and barren plateaus to expansive coves, fertile valleys, and wooded thickets.

Long-Term Results The practical value of the solutions obtained is one way to determine if the subjective reports of accomplishments might be temporary euphoria. The nature of these solutions covered a broad spectrum, including: A new approach to the design of a vibratory microtome A commercial building design, accepted by the client Space-probe experiments devised to measure solar properties Design of a linear electron accelerator beam-steering device An engineering improvement to a magnetic tape recorder A chair design modeled and accepted by the manufacturer A letterhead design approved by the customer A mathematical theorem regarding NOR-gate circuits Completion of a furniture-line design A new conceptual model of a photon found to be useful A design of a private dwelling approved by the client Table 9.3

Pharmaceuticals are essentially biomimetic in principle, but are not often designed to have no side effects. Drugs were historically created from natural substances; the word drug comes from the Dutch droog, meaning "dried plant." As evidenced in Neanderthal archaeological digs, natural medicines have been in use for more than sixty thousand years. Excavations have revealed the use of at least seven herbal remedies that still show proven therapeutic value, including ephedra (as a cold remedy), hollyhock (poor man's aspirin), and yarrow (wound dressing).

The medical profession has good reason to be alarmed by the inroads made in its work by irregular, unorthodox systems, schools and cults of treating human ailments; but instead of raging at the audacious presumption of these interlopers, would it not be better to inquire if there is not some reason for the astonishing spread and popularity of these therapeutic innovations?

Those who begin below, as so many do today, assume that God’s love is whispered first in their inner senses, that it is part of their nature, that it is part of creation. And they assume that it becomes real to them when they experience its therapeutic benefits.

Sodium bicarbonate is a therapeutic drug for vertigo.

Whenever an organization makes the transition from one lifecycle stage to the next, difficulties arise. In order to learn new patterns of behavior, organizations must abandon their old patterns. When an organization expends energy to make effective transitions from old to new patterns of behavior, I consider its problems normal. If, however, an organization expends energy inward in futile attempts to remove blockages to change, it is experiencing abnormal problems which usually require external therapeutic intervention. If the abnormality is prolonged and threatens the organization’s existence, its problems are pathological, requiring a different intervention—surgical, not therapeutic, in nature.

Felke realized that prescribing herbal teas, homeopathic remedies, diet and water applications was not sufficient. Inspired by the examples of Rikli and Just, he envisioned a therapeutic setting close to nature where patients could escape their accustomed environments and enjoy the benefits of light, air, sun and healthful food. Surprisingly, the residents of the small rural town of Repelen immediately warmed to their new pastor's idea. A delegation undertook the arduous and costly journey to the Hartz mountains to inspect Just's Jungborn. This visit resulted in the formation of the Repelen Jungborn Society, Ltd., with eighty-one associates, mostly members of a local homeopathic lay society. With a capital of 50,000 goldmark, quite a high sum, the group purchased sixty acres of land, which included a forested area and a dead channel of the Rhine abounding in fish. Two large light and air parks, one for women and the other for men, were created and surrounded with high wooden fences. Naked patients took light, air, water and loam baths and engaged in gymnastics twice a day. Felke himself often directed the male patients. Inside the two parks approximately 50 air huts with two or four rooms each were erected. To guarantee maximum access to fresh air they had no doors or windows, only curtains for privacy. An open wooden hall in the center of the park was used for walking during the day, for gymnastics during bad weather and for sleeping on straw mats at night. In the beginning the spa offered friction sitz baths in flat zinc tubs as the only cold water application. Felke also took up Just's earth-and-sand bath, but it was not until he introduced the loam bath in 1912 that he gained fame as the "loam pastor.

THE study of suggestion has shown us that the thoughts of hystericals are not equilibrated; that under diverse influences one of them may develop to an extreme extent and live, so to say, isolated, its own life, to the great detriment of the mental organism. This tendency is not only manifested in artificial experiments; it continually gives place to natural phenomena, which are quite analogous to suggestions. Fixed ideas are for us phenomena of this kind; that is to say, psychological phenomena which are developed in the mind in an automatic manner, outside the will and the personal perception of the patient, but which, instead of being, like suggestions, experimentally called forth, are formed naturally under the influence of accidental causes. This difference in the artificial or natural provocation of automatic phenomena has, from a clinical and especially therapeutic point of view, quite grave consequences to justify this distinction. Ideas of this kind have been described at length in the case of patients considered as lunatics. They went under the name of obsessions, impulsions, phobias; they characterise the delirium which develops with some neurasthenics or, as they are often called in France, certain degenerates. We shall repeat here what we have already said in speaking of abulias.' ' Stigmates mentaux de I'hyst&ie, p. 122. 278 Unquestionably, this characteristic belongs to these patients; we in nowise deny it; we shall only say that it also belongs to hystericals; that with them it is very frequent, and that it is the cause of the great majority of their accidents.

Dead periods have to be left to take their chances. This goes for the present too, which we should not try to disturb in its melancholy deliquescence. Even in politics - indeed especially in politics - relentless therapy is the worst of things. This is exactly what socialists practise on the social, ecologists on nature and all of us on a host of defunct ideologies: a relentless therapy. Living on because we refuse to see technology give in to death. Anticipating everything, hoarding everything, because we refuse to see events slipping beyond our grasp. We cultivate the coma of yesteryear. We adore artificial transplants. We go crazy over prostheses. Everywhere this relentless clinging to life corresponds to the emaciation of the original figures of life, to the disincarnation of bodies, to the therapeutic reincarnation of a dead world, a bygone age. A society which allows an abominable event to burgeon from its dungheap and grow on its surface is like a man who lets a fly crawl unheeded across his face or saliva dribble unstemmed from his mouth - either epileptic or dead.

It behooves us, however, to remember that exercise is a truly odd sort of medicine. It is largely medicinal because the absence of physical activity is unhealthy. Further, exercise not only is an abnormal behavior from an evolutionary perspective but also never evolved to be therapeutic. Instead, we evolved to spend energy—much more than our ape cousins do—on physical activity primarily out of necessity and for other social reasons and otherwise sensibly reserve scarce calories for the chief thing natural selection cares about: reproductive success. To use energy frugally, many of the genes that maintain our bodies thus depend on the stresses caused by being active.

Finally, it is worth cultivating moments in life in which we feel immense satisfaction and happiness divorced from our own success or achievements. This happens commonly when we find ourselves in a beautiful landscape—the mountains, the sea, a forest. We do not feel the prying, comparing eyes of others, the need to have more attention or to assert ourselves. We are simply in awe of what we see, and it is intensely therapeutic. This can also occur when we contemplate the immensity of the universe, the uncanny set of circumstances that had to come together for us to be born, the vast reaches of time before us and after us. These are sublime moments, and as far removed from the pettiness and poisons of envy as possible.

Christians know why this is so. We know that God made every person, and without slipping into a kind of therapeutic wonderment project, that God has made each of us as a little display of Himself. That’s the wonder of being made in God’s image, as we saw earlier. Yet wokeness, as with all ideologies, does not start with the wonder of image-bearing. It starts with the dull stereotypes of Marxist collectivism. It breaks people down by how they look and where they’re from. It robs the human person of dignity, uniqueness, and a sense of lingering enchantment even in a world ruined by the Fall. It does not teach that we are all bound by the common bond of image-bearing, but rather that we live in fundamental alienation from one another.26 This alienation as covered elsewhere is truly impossible to overcome—unless one belongs to an underprivileged group, and then one does not live in alienation with members of the group. But here again wokeness compromises biblical truth and fails to capture reality. The miracle of salvation is that people who have nothing in common end up as spiritual family members, while very often people who have massive natural overlap end up living very different lives and holding very different views.

People in our hungry modern world are always scraping at the clay of their hearts. They have a new thought, a new plan, a new syndrome, that now explains why they are the way they are. They have found an old memory that opens up a new wound. They keep on relentlessly, again and again, scraping the clay away from their own hearts. In nature, we do not see the trees, for instance, getting seriously involved in therapeutic analysis of their root systems or the whole stony world that they had to avoid on their way to the light. Each tree grows in two directions at once, into the darkness and out to the light with as many branches and roots as it needs to embody its wild desires.

We group all deaths into six categories: homicide, suicide, accident, natural disease, therapeutic complication, and undetermined.

But, as I have written elsewhere, for the artist himself art is not necessarily therapeutic; he is not automatically relieved of his fantasies by expressing them. Instead, by some perverse logic of creation, the act of formal expression may simply make the dredged-up material more readily available to him. The result of handling it in his work may well be that he finds himself living it out. For the artist, in short, nature often imitates art. Or, to change the cliché, when an artist holds a mirror up to nature he finds out who and what he is; but the knowledge may change him irredeemably so that he becomes that image.

And we're cheerful, too. You can count on that.' Obligingly she smiled in a neighbourly way at him. 'It will be a relief to leave Earth with its repressive legislation. We were listening OH the FM to the news about the McPhearson Act.' 'We consider it dreadful,' the adult male said. 'I have to agree with you,' Chic said. 'But what can one do?' He looked around for the mail; as always it was lost somewhere in the mass of clutter. 'One can emigrate,' the adult male simulacrum pointed out. 'Um,' Chic said absently. He had found an unexpected heap of recent-looking bills from parts suppliers; with a feeling of gloom and even terror he began to bills from parts suppliers; with a feeling of gloom and even terror he began to sort through them. Had Maury seen these? Probably. Seen them and then pushed them away immediately, out of sight. Frauenzimmer Associates functioned better if it was not reminded of such facts of life. Like a regressed neurotic, it had to hide several aspects of reality from its percept system in order to function at all. This was hardly ideal, but what really was the alternative? To be realistic would be to give up, to die. Illusion, of an infantile nature was essential for the tiny firm's survival, or at least so it seemed to him and Maury. In any case both of them had adopted this attitude. Their simulacra -- the adult ones -- disapproved of this; their cold, logical appraisal of reality stood in sharp contrast, and Chic always felt a little naked, a little embarrassed, before the simulacra; he knew he should set a better example for them. 'If you bought a jalopy and emigrated to Mars,' the adult male said, 'We could be the famnexdo for you.' 'I wouldn't need any family next-door,' Chic said, 'if I emigrated to Mars. I'd go to get away from people. 'We'd make a very good family next-door to you,' the female said. 'Look,' Chic said, 'you don't have to lecture me about your virtues. I know more than you do yourselves.' And for good reason. Their presumption, their earnest sincerity, amused but also irked him. As next-door neighbours this group of sims would be something of a nuisance, he reflected. Still, that was what emigrants wanted, in fact needed, out in the sparsely-populated colonial regions. He could appreciate that; after all, it was Frauenzimmer Associates' business to understand. A man, when he emigrated, could buy neighbours, buy the simulated presence of life, the sound and motion of human activity -- or at least its ​mechanical nearsubstitute to bolster his morale in the new environment of unfamiliar stimuli and perhaps, god forbid, no stimuli at all. And in addition to this primary psychological gain there was a practical secondary advantage as well. The famnexdo group of simulacra developed the parcel of land, tilled it and planted it, irrigated it, made it fertile, highly productive. And the yield went to the it, irrigated it, made it fertile, highly productive. And the yield went to the human settler because the famnexdo group, legally speaking, occupied the peripheral portions of his land. The famnexdo were actually not next-door at all; they were part of their owner's entourage. Communication with them was in essence a circular dialogue with oneself; the famnexdo, it they were functioning properly, picked up the covert hopes and dreams of the settler and detailed them back in an articulated fashion. Therapeutically, this was helpful, although from a cultural standpoint it was a trifle sterile.

The nature of the falsehood seems to lie in this—that Anderson’s affirmation of life by love, passion, and freedom had, paradoxically enough, the effect of quite negating life, making it gray, empty, and devoid of meaning. We are quite used to hearing that this is what excessive intellection can do; we are not so often warned that emotion, if it is of a certain kind, can be similarly destructive. Yet when feeling is understood as an answer, a therapeutic, when it becomes a sort of critical tool and is conceived of as excluding other activities of life, it can indeed make the world abstract and empty.

This morning we are going to reflect on the nature of meditation, the principle of applying mindfulness-based meditation to better well-being, and how meditation can be studied in collaboration with neuroscience. One of the first questions we ask ourselves is why bother to meditate, and if we do, on what, and how? The very nature of meditation is mental training, a tool of transformation over the long term of our life. We should understand that mental health is not simply the absence of mental illness. Are we really living our life in the most optimal way? Is what we call our “normal” state of going about life really optimal? We can see from our own experience that the way we engage with and interpret the world is often distorted by a mode of perception that doesn’t correspond with the way things are. Often we find ourselves in the pangs of torment from mental toxins such as hatred, obsessive desire, arrogance, nagging jealousy. Those are certainly not optimal ways of relating to our own experience or to others. We know that we can experience genuine altruistic love and compassion, but couldn’t we do so more often, so that those states of mind become the normal way we relate to others? Hence the ideal of long-term transformation: becoming a better human being for one’s own well-being and that of others as well. These two go together. That is precisely the meaning of meditation. Meditation is not just sitting and blissing out under a mango tree in order to have a better day, although it might help. If we look at the Eastern roots of the word for meditation, it truly means cultivation—cultivating new qualities, new ways of being. It also means familiarization: familiarization with a new way of seeing the world; for example, not grasping at permanence, and instead seeing the dynamic flow of interdependence. Meditation means familiarization with qualities that we have the potential to enhance, like unconditional compassion, openness to others, and inner peace. It’s also familiarization with the very way the mind works. So often we are full of thoughts that ceaselessly go through our mind. We hardly notice what’s going on. What is behind the screen of thoughts? Can we relate to some kind of basic mindfulness and open presence? All of these sorts of inner exploration are considered meditation. From the start, the Buddhist path has a therapeutic goal: to free ourselves and others from suffering. Obviously this is not a mere hobby, something nice to add to our lives. Rather, inner transformation is something that determines the quality of every instant we live.

A leviathan yearly grant budget gives Dr. Fauci power to make and break careers, enrich—or punish—university research centers, manipulate scientific journals, and to dictate not just the subject matter and study protocols, but also the outcome of scientific research across the globe. Since 2005, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has funneled an additional $1.7 billion3 into Dr. Fauci’s annual discretionary budget to launder sketchy funding for biological weapons research, often of dubious legality. This Pentagon funding brings the annual total of grants that Dr. Fauci dispenses to an astonishing $7.7 billion—almost twice the annual donations of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Working in close collaboration with pharmaceutical companies and other large grant makers, including Bill Gates—the biggest funder of vaccines in the world—Dr. Fauci has consistently used his awesome power to defund, bully, silence, de-license, and ruin scientists whose research threatens the pharmaceutical paradigm, and to reward those scientists who support him. Dr. Fauci rewards loyalty with prestigious sinecures on key HHS committees when they continue to advance his interests. When the so-called “independent” expert panels license and recommend new pharmaceuticals, Dr. Fauci’s control over these panels gives him the power to fast-track his pet drugs and vaccines through the regulatory hurdles, often skipping key milestones like animal testing or functional human safety studies. Dr. Fauci’s funding strategies evince a bias for developing and promoting patented medicines and vaccines, and for sabotaging and discrediting off-patent therapeutic drugs, nutrition, vitamins, and natural, functional, and integrative medicines. Under his watch, drug companies engineered the opioid crisis and made American citizens the globe’s most over-medicated population.

I regard the placebo response as a pure example of healing elicited by the mind; far from being a nuisance, it is, potentially, the greatest therapeutic ally doctors can find in their efforts to mitigate disease. I believe further that the art of medicine is in the selection of treatments and their presentation to patients in ways that increase their effectiveness through the activation of placebo responses. The best way to do this as a physician is to use treatments that you yourself genuinely believe in, because your belief in what you do catalyzes the beliefs of your patients.

I’ve heard people with homeland defense say, ‘Oh, we keep a good control on whatever genes are synthesized commercially, blah blah blah.’ ” Pincus takes no comfort there. He related another story. “For therapeutic reasons, we wanted to synthesize a gene that encoded the toxic part of ricin, that would be expressed—i.e., produced—in human cells. This should have set off a lot of red flags if anyone was looking for that kind of thing. But, man, we ordered it, and we had the gene two weeks later. So if you think the Select Agent list protects us from sophisticated terrorists …” I’ll finish the sentence for him. It’s a load of horse spleen.

There is no more underrated and research-backed therapeutic tool than walking. It reduces back pain, and body pain in general, through dozens of mechanisms. Studies show that walking does the following: Increases circulation of natural opioids in the body175 Reduces pain sensitivity176 Stimulates production and circulation of synovial fluid within joints177 Improves lumbar (low back) function178 Strengthens foot muscles, creating a more stable and pliable base for the hips, back, and neck (especially in minimalist shoes)179 Reduces perceived pain levels, improves blood pressure, and strengthens feelings of personal power180 (if you walk with upright posture instead of slumped) Reduces bone density loss with age, helping to prevent osteoporosis and reduce osteoarthritis pain181 Is a surprisingly effective weight loss and weight management technique, which in turn keeps overall compression forces on joints down182 Increases blood flow to spinal muscles, improving oxygen and nutrient delivery required for cellular healing183 Speeds up elimination of cellular waste products through the repeated contractions of various muscle groups throughout the body183 Reduces the levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, which has a correlative relationship with subjective pain levels184 (Barefoot walking) Improves body awareness and wound healing, reduces inflammation, and helps prevent chronic inflammatory diseases185 Walking doesn’t just help relieve back pain—it targets the central causes of pain. And as you can see from the many studies on walking and pain relief, the benefits are not limited to the locomotion of walking. It’s movement in general that increases circulation of natural opioids, reduces pain sensitivity, stimulates synovial fluid production, and supports cellular health.

The essence of creativity transcends the ephemeral nature of existence, for it possesses the power to weave together the scattered fragments of our being into a cohesive tapestry, akin to a cinematic masterpiece, allowing us to behold the raw beauty of our lived experience. This art form is not merely a source of aesthetic pleasure but a therapeutic balm that imbues us with the ability to become more fully human, for without it, the disparate moments of our lives would remain as lifeless shards, scattered haphazardly upon the floor of our souls.

Several therapeutic properties found in certain essential oils are documented as being antispasmodic, anti-inflammatory, and analgesic (pain-relieving). When applied topically, the oil will easily penetrate the skin and can be carried through the bloodstream to affected areas within minutes where you need it most.

Existential loneliness and a sense that one's life is inconsequential, both of which are hallmarks of modern civilizations, seem to me to derive in part from our abandoning of belief in the therapeutic dimensions of a relationship with place, a continually refreshed sense of the endless complexity of patterns in the natural world. Patterns that are ever present and discernible, and which incorporate the observer undermines the feeling that one is alone in the world, or meaningless in it.

The perceived value of pets has been grossly exaggerated to stimulate demand and to create jobs and wealth. Although scarce for lack of public funding, the only decent research in the field has shown that the long-term benefits of pets are largely overrated, if not totally absent. The therapeutic value of zootherapy is of the same nature as that of gambling, binge-eating, and alcohol: it provides a transient, feel-good experience, but at a high cost to all involved.

One example of taking a male-friendly approach [in therapy] is the view that traditional masculinity is not the root cause of men’s mental health problems, and, in fact, might contain valuable resources that can enhance mental health. This viewpoint allows therapists to understand men in a way that is more likely to foster better rapport between therapist and client, facilitating a more successful therapy.

No matter what therapeutic approach is provided, if the relationship between therapist and client is not established or is perceived by the client as problematic, then it is unlikely that the therapy will be successful.

The first was a touch unsettling, but before long it was more therapeutic than scary, listening to the soft thunder rolling through the hills and valleys around you. There was a connectedness to nature that the storm brought, almost like a deep voice singing to you as you lay in your tent.

Albert Hofmann lamented the use of LSD as an inebriating drug rather than a therapeutic treatment or spiritual tool, which made serious research on the drug impossible. He called the recreational use of LSD “careless and irresponsible” and felt it to be a tragic misunderstanding of the nature and meaning of these kinds of substances. He believed that we should treat LSD with the same reverence indigenous peoples have for these substances.

Natural Ways to Help Depression Depression is not one illness. Like anxiety, the pandemic spawned a whole new level of people being diagnosed with depression and placed on antidepressant medication, without ever getting a proper evaluation or trying simple fixes. Here are nine common things I do for patients before prescribing antidepressant medication. 1. Check for and (if necessary) correct thyroid hormone abnormalities. 2. Work with a nutritionally informed physician to optimize your folate, vitamin B12, vitamin D, homocysteine, and omega-3 fatty acids. I’m convinced that without doing these nutritional fixes, patients are less likely to respond to the medications. 3. Try an elimination diet for three weeks. 4. Add colorful fruits and vegetables into your diet. 5. Eliminate the ANTs (automatic negative thoughts). See days 22, 116–117. 6. Exercise—walk like you are late for 45 minutes four times a week. This has been found to be as effective as antidepressant medication.[1] 7. Add one of the following supplements to your daily routine: Saffron 30 mg/day; curcumin, not as turmeric root but as Longvida, which is much more efficiently absorbed; zinc as citrate or glycinate 30 mg (tolerable upper level is 40 mg/day for adults, 34 mg/day for adolescents, less for younger kids); or magnesium glycinate, citrate, or malate, 100–500 mg with 30 mg of vitamin B6. 8. Consume probiotics daily. 9. Try morning bright light therapy with a therapeutic lamp of 10,000 lux for 20–30 minutes. If someone comes to me with depression, I order screening labs, teach them not to believe every negative thought they have, give them basic supplements (saffron, zinc, curcumins, and omega-3s), and encourage them to exercise. Many people never need medication if they follow through with the program. If the above interventions are ineffective, I’ll try other nutraceuticals or medications targeted to their specific type of depression (take the test at brainhealthassessment.com).

Connection survival style themes to show up in an atmosphere of safety and consent. The use of contracting emphasizes the therapist’s attention, interest, and concern about truly understanding the client. Contracting provides an opportunity to shift old relational patterns of feeling completely alone. This process of intersubjectivity supports a shift away from objectification toward subjectification. Clients are invited to be active collaborators with their therapist, which provides a sense of control over the therapeutic process. Attunement: The contracting process invites clients identified with Attunement survival style themes to check in with and express their needs and feelings. From the very beginning, this process provides an opportunity to shift old relational patterns of feeling that they cannot express their needs and feelings. Contracting helps clients feel seen and heard—by their therapist but also themselves. They are invited, welcomed, and encouraged to reflect on their authentic needs and wishes. Trust: The contracting process gives clients identified with Trust survival style themes the power to set their own course for therapy. The collaborative nature of contracting provides an opportunity to shift old relational patterns where they felt they had to control others in order to feel safe. They are welcomed to modulate their level of openness and vulnerability according to their own sense of comfort and trust. Autonomy: The contracting process encourages clients identified with Autonomy survival style themes to share their authentic Self in an environment of openness, understanding, and respect. Inviting the client to determine their intention and goals for therapy provides an opportunity to shift old relational patterns of having to control against other people’s agendas. Love-Sexuality: The contracting process supports clients identified with Love-Sexuality survival style themes with a sense of not having to be perfect to be accepted and loved. Contracting provides an opportunity to shift old relational patterns where they felt pressure of having to perform and achieve. Clients are welcomed to share from a more open-hearted and intimate place.

Healing takes place when there are dozens of therapeutic moments available each day for the person to control, revisiting and reworking their traumatic experience. When you have friends, family, and other healthy people in your life, you have a natural healing environment. We heal best in community. Creating a network—a village, whatever you want to call it—gives you opportunities to revisit trauma in moderate, controllable doses. That pattern of stress activation will ultimately lead to a more regulated stress-reactivity curve (see Figure 5). So the traumatized person with a sensitized stress response can become “neurotypical”—less sensitized, less vulnerable. In fact, they can ultimately develop the capacity to demonstrate resilience.

As unpredictable as the content of the LSD reaction is its intensity; the individual responses to the same dosage level vary considerably. My experience indicates that the degree of sensitivity or resistance to LSD depends on complicated psychological factors rather than on variables of a constitutional, biological, or metabolic nature. Subjects who in everyday life have the need to maintain full self-control and have difficulties in relaxing and “letting go” can sometimes resist relatively high dosages of LSD (300 to 500 micrograms) and show no detectable changes. Occasionally, a person can resist a considerable dose of LSD if he has set this as a personal task for himself for any reason. He may decide to do this to defy the therapist and compete with him, to demonstrate his “strength” to himself and to others, to endure more than his fellow patients, or for many other reasons. Usually, however, more relevant unconscious motives can be found underlying such superficial rationalizations. Another cause for a high resistance to the effect of the drug may be insufficient preparation, instruction, and reassurance of the subject, a lack of his full agreement and cooperation, or absence of basic trust in the therapeutic relationship. In this case, the LSD reaction sometimes does not take its full course until the motives of resistance are analyzed and understood. Occasional sudden sobering, which can occur at any period of the session and on any dosage level, can be understood as a sudden mobilization of defenses against the emergence of unpleasant traumatic material. Among psychiatric patients, severe obsessive-compulsive neurotics are particularly resistant to the effect of LSD. It has been a common observation in my research that such patients can resist dosages of more than 500 micrograms of LSD and show only slight signs of physical or psychological distress. In extreme cases, it can take several dozen high-dose LSD sessions before the psychological resistances of these individuals are reduced to the point that they start having episodes of regression to childhood and become aware of the unconscious material that has to be worked through.

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 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.

It's, like ... therapeutic for people to fall apart, as long as they can hang on long enough to build back up.

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It is not possible for human beings to outgrow loneliness. Nor can someone from a culture that condescends to nature easily escape the haunting thought that one’s life is meaningless. Existential loneliness and a sense that one’s life is inconsequential, both of which are hallmarks of modern civilizations, seem to me to derive in part from our abandoning a belief in the therapeutic dimensions of a relationship with place. A continually refreshed sense of the unplumbable complexity of patterns in the natural world, patterns that are ever present and discernible, and which incorporate the observer, undermine the feeling that one is alone in the world, or meaningless in it. The effort to know a place deeply is, ultimately, an expression of the human desire to belong, to fit somewhere. The determination to know a particular place, in my experience, is consistently rewarded. And every natural place, to my mind, is open to being known. And somewhere in this process a person begins to sense that they themselves are becoming known, so that when they are absent from that place they know that place misses them. And this reciprocity, to know and be known, reinforces a sense that one is necessary in the world.

the emphasis must be on the work, never on yourself or the desire for recognition. You are fusing your mind with the work itself, and any intrusive thoughts from your ego or doubts about yourself or personal obsessions will interrupt the flow. Not only will you find this flow immensely therapeutic, but it will also yield uncannily creative results.

Rose Heikkinen, flourishing in mental health counselling, holds dual master’s degrees and operates a private practice in Maine. On her 38-acre farm, she offers Ecotherapy, intertwining nature with therapy. Passionate about biking, yoga, and sailing, Rose champions holistic well-being and environmental consciousness through her innovative therapeutic methods.

However, Pauling’s interest in these carotenoids and flavonoids was confined to their chemical structures and the influence of structure on optical properties; he did not address their health functions. In 1941 Pauling was diagnosed with Bright’s disease, or glomerulonephritis, which was at the time an often-fatal kidney disorder. On the advice of physicians at the Rockefeller Institute, he went to San Francisco for treatment by Thomas Addis, an innovative Stanford nephrologist. Addis prescribed a diet low in salt and protein, plenty of water, and supplementary vitamins and minerals that Pauling followed for nearly 14 years and completely recovered. This was dramatic firsthand experience of the therapeutic value of the diet. Revelations When Pauling cast about for a new research direction in the 1950s, he realized that mental illness was a significant public health problem that had not been sufficiently addressed by scientists. Perhaps his mother’s megaloblastic madness and premature death caused by B12 deficiency underlay this interest. At about this time, Pauling’s eldest son, Linus Jr., began a residency in psychiatry, which undoubtedly prompted Pauling to consider the nature of mental illness. Thanks to funding from the Ford Foundation, Pauling investigated the role of enzymes in brain function but made little progress. When he came across a copy of Niacin Therapy in Psychiatry (1962) by Abram Hoffer in 1965, Pauling was astonished to learn that simple substances needed in minute amounts to prevent deficiency diseases could have therapeutic application in unrelated diseases when given in very large amounts. This serendipitous and key event was critically responsible for Pauling’s seminal paper in his emergent medical field. Later, Pauling was especially excited by Hoffer’s observations on the survival of patients with advanced cancer who responded well to his micronutrient and dietary regimen, originally formulated to help schizophrenics manage their illness.19,20 The regimen includes large doses of B vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E, beta-carotene, selenium, zinc, and other micronutrients. About 40 percent of patients treated adjunctively with Hoffer’s regimen lived, on average, five or more years, and about 60 percent survived four times longer than controls. These results were even better than those achieved by Scottish surgeon Ewan Cameron, Pauling’s close clinical collaborator, in Scotland. After a long and extremely productive career at Caltech,

The resulting Fitzgerald Report’s conclusions, which were officially published in the Congressional Record on August 3, 1953,12 shook the very foundations of the medical establishment’s encroachments. Its purpose was to assess the state of cancer medicine during this critical time in American history, and more specifically to uncover any foul play in the free flow of medical knowledge and therapeutics: foul play that Fitzgerald both affirmed as true and disclosed with remarkable boldness. In his report to Senator William Langer of North Dakota, Fitzgerald offered a damning indictment of the ruling medical class, which he pegged as engaging in an active conspiracy to suppress natural treatments and cures. He looked at a number of controversial cancer treatments, including the Hoxsey Tonic, and determined that the AMA in its witch hunt had been “hasty, capricious, arbitrary, and outright dishonest” in declaring these treatments ineffective. Fitzgerald

The potential utility of therapeutic gene editing goes far beyond simply reverting mutated genes back to their healthy states. Some scientists are employing CRISPR in human cells to block viral infections, just like this molecular defense system naturally evolved to do in bacteria. In fact, the first clinical trials to use gene editing are aimed at curing HIV/AIDS by editing a patient’s own immune cells so the virus can’t penetrate them. And in another landmark effort, the first human life was saved by gene editing in combination with another emerging breakthrough in medicine: cancer immunotherapy, in which the body’s own immune system is trained to hunt down and kill cancerous cells.

One consistent feature stood out: The samples all displayed a striking depletion of white blood cells within the lymph nodes and bone marrow, precisely the tissues that become packed with the feverishly dividing cells of lymphoma patients. Two Yale pharmacologists, Louis Goodman and Alfred Gilman, who had contracted to study the therapeutic effects of nitrogen mustard, made the connection. In a burst of imagination they entertained the possibility that the war gas possessed a dual nature, that it was a strange Jekyll-and-Hyde compound that could exist both on the battlefield and within a physician’s clinic.

Imprecatory psalms. Imprecatory psalms (Ps 12; 35; 52; 57—59; 69; 70; 83; 109; 137; 140) are usually lament psalms where the writer’s bitterness and desire for vindication are especially predominant. This leads to such statements as Psalm 137:8- 9, “[Happy is] he who seizes your infants / and dashes them against the rocks.” Such statements are shocking to modern sensitivities and cause many to wonder at the ethical standards of the biblical writers. However, several points must be made. The writer is actually pouring out his complaint to God regarding the exile, as in Psalm 137. He is also heeding the divine command of Deuteronomy 32:35 (Rom 12:19), “It is mine to avenge; I will repay.” Finally, as Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart note, the author is calling for judgment on the basis of the covenant curses (Deut 28:53-57; 32:25), which make provision for the complete annihilation of the transgressors, even family members (2003:221). The hyperbolic language is common in such emotional passages. In short, these do not really contradict the New Testament teaching to love our enemies. When we can pour out our animosity to God, that very act opens the door to acts of kindness akin to Romans 12:20 (Prov 25:21-22). In fact, meditation on and application of these psalms could be therapeutic to those who have suffered traumatic hurt (such as child abuse). By pouring out one’s natural bitterness to God, the victim could be freed to “love the unlovely.” We must remember that the same David who penned all the above except for Psalm 83 and Psalm 137 showed great mercy and love to Saul. When you have called out for justice after being deeply wounded (like the martyred saints in Rev 6:9-11), Romans 12:19 is actually being fulfilled because the vengeance is truly left with God, freeing you to forgive your enemy.

Probiotics are one of the best supplements you can take to avoid an intestinal imbalance. They strengthen the intestinal walls and manufacture vital nutrients. They also help the body to use nutrients and fight harmful microbes in the GI tract. Your body actually contains about ten times as many probiotic bacteria cells as it does human cells! You simply couldn't survive without these little creatures. Probiotics protect us from a number of health problems, including food allergies and skin problems. Probiotics also play a key role in the female reproductive system. Like the GI tract, the vagina contains and relies on a delicate ecosystem for optimal health. The Lactobacillus strains that populate the walls of the vagina make the environment too acidic for most intruders, thus protecting the vagina and the womb from infection. Just like the GI tract, however, this ecosystem can easily become disrupted by the exact same causes: antibiotics and stress. Spermicides and birth control pills can also cause an imbalance. Imbalances can usually be remedied with therapeutic doses of Lactobacillus acidophilus. When you buy probiotic supplements, it's important to know which strains of probiotic bacteria are in the supplement. Each strain and substrain offers its own unique benefits. The Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium strains are found naturally in the human GI tract and offer countless health benefits. They're the most prevalent strains you'll find in supplements. Lactobacillus GG, sold as Culturelle, is the best studied. Bacillus subtilis is a wonderfully beneficial probiotic that does not occur naturally in humans but is found in many probiotic supplements. It's excellent at killing pathogens and unwanted microorganisms. If B. subtilis is on the ingredients list of your probiotic supplement, you have a gentle friend offering powerful protection. Probiotic supplements come in capsules and powders. They're alive yet dormant when you get them in this form and become active when exposed to warmth and moisture inside your body. Either form is fine, but it's critical to take them on an empty stomach (when your stomach acid levels are low). Even though they can live in the intestines, most probiotics don't survive stomach acid. Enteric-coated capsules help, too. During pregnancy, the advantage to taking probiotic supplements instead of fermented probiotic sources like kombucha, kefir, or yogurt is that the exact strains you're getting are tightly controlled. The cultures used in fermented foods aren't always tightly controlled, so you run the risk of ingesting organisms like yeasts, which produce toxins.

Rosebush by Maisie Aletha Smikle I am a flower I am a thorn I am beautiful I am ugly I can make you happy I can make you sad I can make you smile I can make you cry A rosebush I am With aromatic titillating fragrances Scented to warm the heart And stimulate the senses Like a coat of many colors I come Adorned with needle sharp thorns Designed to prick and puncture For natural therapeutic acupuncture My thorns the Master carried on His head That pricked Him sore till He bled A crown of rosebuds was withheld A crown of thorns was used instead Lovely beautiful prickly rosebush Designed by God the Father With thorns to make its stalks complete Without which the rosebush would be incomplete If one desires a rosebush Be prepared for the thorns For a rose is not a rose Without its prickly thorns The rosebush endowed With its attributes intricately woven Has proven not to deceive But to intrigue mesmerize and hypnotize

But when we activate trauma memories and our stress-response systems in ways that offer controllability and predictability, we can begin to heal a sensitized system. Healing takes place when there are dozens of therapeutic moments available each day for the person to control, revisiting and reworking their traumatic experience. When you have friends, family, and other healthy people in your life, you have a natural healing environment. We heal best in community. Creating a network—a village, whatever you want to call it—gives you opportunities to revisit trauma in moderate, controllable doses. That pattern of stress activation will ultimately lead to a more regulated stress-reactivity curve (see Figure 5). So the traumatized person with a sensitized stress response can become “neurotypical”—less sensitized, less vulnerable. In fact, they can ultimately develop the capacity to demonstrate resilience. The

The type of image you are exposed to makes a clear difference in your health. In a 2014 study led by Dr. Ellen Vincent at Clemson University’s School of Agricultural, Forest and Environmental Studies, researchers found nature images resulted in less pain and a lower diastolic blood pressure. Vincent and her team measured the amount of pain with a group of students with their hands in a bucket of ice water, then repeated the experiment with hospital patients. Nature images had the benefit of reducing pain more than no images at all. Also, nature scenes depicting hazard conditions, such as a storm, did not have a positive effect. Moreover, abstract art was found to cause stress and provided no therapeutic value. Other studies have also found that being surrounded by nature produces a balancing and healing response.

Even when they speak of the need for "meaning and "love," therapists define love and meaning simply as the fulfillment 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 him self, 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 overthrow of "inhibitions" and the nonstop celebration of the self.

Even when they speak of the need for "meaning and "love," therapists define love and meaning simply as the fulfillment 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 him self-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 overthrow of "inhibitions" and the nonstop celebration of the self.

Even when they speak of the need for "meaning" and "love," therapists define love and meaning simply as the fulfillment 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 him self-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 overthrow of "inhibitions" and the nonstop celebration of the self.

The basis for the potential of all virolytic therapeutics resides in the exquisite selectivity they exhibit for infecting and killing cancer cells. The very nature of cancer cells makes them extremely susceptible to virus infection: they divide in an uncontrolled fashion and are metabolically hyperactive, thus they exhibit greatly diminished capacity for apoptosis and innate immune defense against virus infection. While normal cells reduce metabolic activity, activate apoptotic signaling pathways, and block cell cycle progression in response to virus infection, cancer cells remain oblivious. These are perfect conditions for the growth of viruses, particularly those that are attenuated for growth in normal cells. Consequently, oncolytic viruses are specific reagents that target cancer cells and spread from cell to cell within tumors. It has become apparent that the direct lytic effects of viruses on cancer cells is just one element of their therapeutic effects, the cytolisis of infected cells releases viral and cellular antigens that can provoke anti-tumor immune responses, and some cancer therapeutic viruses are engineered to deliver additional genes such as immune activators to augment these effects.

Sounds Is Love of All, the World Sounds create soulful existence, When the oceans tide, it is sound; When fervency of love creates sympathy of sobbing, sighing, jubilating, and tears drops, it’s a hymn of sound and presence. When rains, it creates symphonies that therapeutic the body and mind, it is sound. There is sound. When sharing a glass of wine while looking at your significant other swallow its taste, There is sound. When night becomes morning, noise of the birds tweak, the dogs bark, pancakes sizzling on the pan, bees gathering for honey, it is sound. There is sound. When listening to music for a moodily Spirit, moving rhythmically to the music, it is sound. When coitus makes quakes, it is sound. In durations of lovemaking; the breathing, the objects banging, the thrusting, and the instrumental tones from the mouth, the kisses, the clapping and rubbing of flesh, it all surrounds the atmosphere, it is sound. There is sound. When love cuddles in your significant other sleeps, and hear breathing, heart beats, maneuvering, it is sound. There is sound. During intensity of love at its silence and loudest, there is sound. As penetration of love goes deep and pulls out a sound of intensity opens and reactions follow, it is sound. There is sound. Beauty is the penetrating sound of the verses, the Psalms, the Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, the Gospels, and overall the Holy Scriptures spoken from a fervent tongue, power of thought, and sensible recovery from what aches, in all its sound. Sound surrounds all ways. It is sound. Sound is therapy to the love and Spirit, a sound mind, in all, the world is sound.

Of special concern to restorative justice are the needs of crime victims that are not being adequately met by the criminal justice system. Victims often feel ignored, neglected, or even abused by the justice process. This results in part from the legal definition of crime, which does not include victims. Crime is defined as against the state, so the state takes the place of the victims. Yet victims often have a number of specific needs from the justice process. Due to the legal definition of crime and the nature of the criminal justice process, the following four types of needs seem to be especially neglected: 1. Information. Victims need answers to questions they have about the offense—why it happened and what has happened since. They need real information, not speculation or the legally constrained information that comes from a trial or plea agreement. Securing real information usually requires direct or indirect access to offenders who hold this information. 2. Truth-telling. An important element in healing or transcending the experience of crime is an opportunity to tell the story of what happened. Indeed, it is often important for a victim to be able to retell this many times. There are good therapeutic reasons for this. Part of the trauma of crime is the way it upsets our views of ourselves and our world, our life-stories. Transcendence of these experiences means “restorying” our lives by telling the stories in significant settings, often where they can receive public acknowledgment. Often, too, it is important for victims to tell their stories to the ones who caused the harm and to have them understand the impact of their actions. 3. Empowerment. Victims often feel like control has been taken away from them by the offenses they’ve experienced—control over their properties, their bodies, their emotions, their dreams. Involvement in their own cases as they go through the justice process can be an important way to return a sense of empowerment to them. 4. Restitution or vindication. Restitution by offenders is often important to victims, sometimes because of the actual losses, but just as importantly, because of the symbolic recognition restitution implies. When an offender makes an effort to make right the harm, even if only partially, it is a way of saying “I am taking responsibility, and you are not to blame.” Restitution, in fact, is a symptom or sign of a more basic need, the need for vindication. While the concept of vindication is beyond the scope of this booklet, I am convinced that it is a basic need that we all have when we are treated unjustly. Restitution is one of a number of ways of meeting this need to even the score. Apology may also contribute to this need to have one’s harm recognized. The theory and practice of restorative justice have

An INFP is dedicated to self-knowledge. In fact, in his two editions of Please Understand Me, Keirsey maintained that the INFP wants more than any other type to achieve self-actualization. Learning the intricacies of his type can help him in that pursuit. The INFP values authenticity and he seeks his true life purpose. What he struggles with is self-doubt. The study of the INFP nature provides him with a means of understanding and accepting that the contradictory nature of his type is real and, oftentimes, the source of his self-doubt. The behavioral and emotional manifestations that he shares with other INFP’s, when revealed and explained become his honored truths, rather than his inadequacies.  By gaining a greater understanding of his personality, the INFP Healer is better able to accept himself, perhaps on a deeper level than the other types because self-awareness, meaning and purpose are compelling interests for him. He wants to know why he feels, thinks, or behaves the way he does. For the INFP, the study of personality can be an enjoyable pastime, an engaging intellectual discovery, and a therapeutic treatment for achieving emotional balance and happiness.

The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)’s administrative law judge, Francis Young, says users cannot die from using marijuana:[27] In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. For example, eating 10 raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death. Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within the supervised routine of medical care.

This hypothesis, referred to as the monoamine hypothesis, grew primarily out of two main observations made in the 1950s and ’60s.14 One was seen in patients being treated for tuberculosis who experienced mood-related side effects from the antitubercular drug iproniazid, which can change the levels of serotonin in the brain. Another was the claim that reserpine, a medication introduced for seizures and high blood pressure, depleted these chemicals and caused depression—that is, until there was a fifty-four person study that demonstrated that it resolved depression.15 From these preliminary and largely inconsistent observations a theory was born, crystallized by the work and writings of the late Dr. Joseph Schildkraut, who threw fairy dust into the field in 1965 with his speculative manifesto “The Catecholamine Hypothesis of Affective Disorders.”16 Dr. Schildkraut was a prominent psychiatrist at Harvard who studied catecholamines, a class of naturally occurring compounds that act as chemical messengers, or neurotransmitters, within the brain. He looked at one neurochemical in particular, norepinephrine, in people before and during treatment with antidepressants and found that depression suppressed its effectiveness as a chemical messenger. Based on his findings, he theorized broadly about the biochemical underpinnings of mental illnesses. In a field struggling to establish legitimacy (beyond the therapeutic lobotomy!), psychiatry was desperate for a rebranding, and the pharmaceutical industry was all too happy to partner in the effort. This idea that these medications correct an imbalance that has something to do with a brain chemical has been so universally accepted that no one bothers to question it or even research it using modern rigors of science. According to Dr. Joanna Moncrieff, we have been led to believe that these medications have disease-based effects—that they’re actually fixing, curing, correcting a real disease in human physiology. Six decades of study, however, have revealed conflicting, confusing, and inconclusive data.17 That’s right: there has never been a human study that successfully links low serotonin levels and depression. Imaging studies, blood and urine tests, postmortem suicide assessments, and even animal research have never validated the link between neurotransmitter levels and depression.18 In other words, the serotonin theory of depression is a total myth that has been unjustly supported by the manipulation of data. Much to the contrary, high serotonin levels have been linked to a range of problems, including schizophrenia and autism.19 Paul Andrews, an assistant professor