Grief

Religion in America

Driving to work today I heard a story on a recent survey on religion. Take a look at the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey
and draw your own conclusions about faith in the US.

Silence

From Dr Norman Vincent Peale from “The Power of Positive Thinking”:

“Everyone should insist upon not less than a quarter of an hour of absolute quiet every twenty-four hours. Go alone into the quietest place available to you and sit or lie down for fifteen minutes and practice the art of silence. Do not talk to anyone. Do not write. Do not read. Think as little as possible. Throw your mind into neutral. Conceive of your mind as quiescent, inactive. When you have attained a quiescent state, then begin to listen for the deeper sounds of harmony and beauty and that of God that are to be found in the essence of silence.”

Art and healing

Flower Mandalas
The Flower Mandalas blog has a dual purpose:

To explore the use of art as a means to healing and transformation.
To ask for your help in completing The Flower Mandalas Project.
Purpose #1: My intent is to use my own Flower Mandalas and related ideas and thoughts as a springboard for a broader exploration of the topic of art, healing, and transformation. I invite you to contribute your own experiences with art, healing, and transformation to the Art, Healing, and Transformation group on Beliefnet.com. I hope that a lively discussion will ensue there. I will moderate this group and, with your permission, post a selection of your contributions on the Flower Mandalas blog. You may also contact me directly at phototransformations@verizon.net.

Purpose #2: I'd like to ask for your responses to the Flower Mandala images posted here, either briefly as comments to the blog posts or in detail on the Flower Mandalas Project group on Beliefnet.com. My plan is to create a book of 52 Flower Mandala images, each one paired with an inspirational quotation or piece of original writing which in some way complements the image. My hope is for each image-and-quote pair to resonate with a fundamental aspect of human experience.

Thanks for listening and sharing.
- David
David J. Bookbinder, LMHC

Brain Rules

Brain Rules The brain is an amazing thing. Most of us have no idea what’s really going on inside our heads. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know.

How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget—and so important to repeat new knowledge?

Brain Rules is about what we know for sure, and what we might do about it.

Ken Wilbur

I was first introduced to Ken Wilber's work in grad school. His writing is very complicated and can not be read lightly. His blog has much the same feel and is quite interesting to explore.

Body/Mind Therapies

I utilize Body/Mind principles in my work. This article Meta-Medicine: New Innovations in Mind-Body Healing Techniques does a good job of summing up how this process works.Meta-medicine coaches help explain why they have pains, what the issues are and aid them to work through these. If certain patterns keep repeating then the growth of the client is stunted and the body reminds them of this.

"The secret of medicine is to distract the patient while nature cures itself." - Voltaire