Science of the SpiritS


Black Cat

Shocking news: Shock therapy recommended for major depression

New guidelines by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) state electroconvulsive therapy - a physical therapy may be used to treat major depressive disorder or major depression in patients who don't respond to medications.

This is the first time the medical organization has ever updated since 2000 its guidelines on the assessment and treatments of depression based on research conducted from 1999 through 2006.

The guidelines drafted by a team led by psychiatrist Alan J. Gelenberg say that the shock (and awe?) therapy may serve as the therapy for patients with major depressive disorder who have a high degree of symptom severity and those who do not respond to medications.

Comment: So when people of conscience become depressed at what they see in the world today, they will first be stuffed with mind-altering drugs. If that is not enough to turn them into robots and make them "happy", electrocution awaits. That's the order of business when psychopaths rule our world.

Fortunately, we have Éiriú Eolas, an amazing stress-control, healing and rejuvenation program to help us. And when enough people of conscience are healed, we can work together to take back what is ours from the psychopaths and create a new world.


Heart

Why Have We Lost the Need for Physical Touch?

Has our hi-tech, media-socialized world lost something critical to our species--non-sexual human physical touch? Hasn't human physical contact set us apart from other animals, and has helped us develop complex language, culture, thinking and emotional expression?

Two hundred years ago, a creature looking somewhat human, was sighted running through the forests of Southern France. Once captured, scientists determined he was age 11, and had run wild in the forests for much of his childhood. One of the fathers of psychiatry at that time, Phillipe Pinel, observed the child--named "Victor"--and concluded, erroneously, that the Victor was an idiot. A French physician attending Victor, disagreed with Pinel, concluding that the child had merely been deprived of human physical touch, which had retarded his social and developmental capacities.

We know from child developmental research that the absence of physical bonding and healthy attachment between an adult and child may result in life-long emotional disturbances. James W. Prescott, an American developmental psychologist, proposed that the origins of violence in society were related to the lack of mother-child bonding. Harry Harlow completed extensive studies on the relationship between affection and development.

Arrow Down

Overweight Kids Face Bias From Their Own Parents

Study finds parents less willing to help buy car, pay tuition for obese offspring

Overweight youngsters may face discrimination at school and in relationships, but a U.S. study has found they can also receive harsher treatment at home - from their own parents.

Studies have shown parents are less likely to help overweight or obese offspring pay for college but researchers from the University of North Texas in Denton have also found parents may be less willing to help their overweight child buy a car.

"No one is going to be surprised that society discriminates against the overweight, but I think it is surprising that it can come from your parents," researcher Adriel Boals told Reuters Health.

Health

The Secret to Healthy Pressure

"For breath is life, and if you breathe well you will live long on earth."
- Sanskrit Proverb

Well, it's not accurate to say that what I am sharing is a secret. In fact, most people are familiar with the expression, "Take a deep breath." The problem is that very few of us have been taught how to take a deep breath in a way that really serves the purpose of bringing us back to balance.

Comment: To learn a breathing technique which stimulates the vagus nerve more effectively, please visit the Eiriu Eolas - Stress Control, Healing and Rejuvenation Program website here.


Butterfly

The Power of the Breath

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am." - Sylvia Plath

The breath is one of your most powerful assets for staying balanced throughout the ups and downs of living.

Using your breath you can positively impact your physiological state. By deliberately taking two or three diaphragmatic breaths in succession, you can counteract the stress arousal reactions that occur in your body when you become anxious, angry, or overwhelmed. Here is an easy way to shift into diaphragmatic breathing: exhale completely, once complete push even a little more air out, your subsequent inhalation will come from your diaphragm.

Comment: To learn more about how breathing can help relieve the stress of everyday life visit the Eiriu Eolas - Stress Control, Healing and Rejuvenation Program website here.


Health

Yoga Relieves Depression by Boosting Calming Neurotransmitter Levels

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© Unknown
Increasing evidence indicates that regular practice of yoga is effective in reducing stress and its effects and even appears to relieve the symptoms of clinical depression.

Yoga is a traditional practice originating in India designed to help the practitioner achieve and maintain both good physical and mental health, as well as fostering spritual enlightenment. The practice incorporates elements of physical exercise, meditation and breathing regulation.

This ancient Eastern discipline continues to gain in popularity in the West for its wide-ranging benefits and medical researchers are taking an increasing interest in its potential to contribute to the prevention and treatment of a diverse collection of physical and mental ailments.

Comment: To learn more about how to relieve depression by boosting calming neurotransmitter levels, visit the Eiriu Eolas - Stress Control, Healing and Rejuvenation Program website here.


Info

What You See is What You Hear

Synesthesia_1
© Psychology TodaySynesthesia Test Picture - How many 2s?
Although you certainly know the difference between a 2 and a 5, identifying the number of times that the figure "2" is printed onto the tile to your left is not necessarily the easiest of tasks. If you are like me, you will have to concentrate and look at the picture line-by-line to distinguish the essentially quite similar symbols that we use to denote twos and fives.

The task would be easier of course, if the 2's and 5's came to us in different colors as they do on the tile below. Or as they do for people who experience synesthesia, a particular neurological condition in which one sensory input is involuntarily linked to another sensory experience. Hearing color, seeing sounds as shapes, or - as in the opening example - numbers as colors are all examples of different kinds of synesthetic experiences.

Much has been written about synesthesia, and research on this perplexing phenomena has the potential to offer many exciting insights into how the human brain makes sense of the world; even for those of us who have never tasted yellow, seen a high-C or don't know what the solution to three times four feels like.

Arrow Up

Mindfulness Meditation May Ease Fatigue & Depression in Multiple Sclerosis

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© worldviewcentre.com.au
Learning mindfulness meditation may help people who have multiple sclerosis (MS) with the fatigue, depression and other life challenges that commonly accompany the disease, according to a study published in the September 28, 2010, issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

In the study, people who took an eight-week class in mindfulness meditation training reduced their fatigue and depression and improved overall quality of life compared to people with MS who received only usual medical care. The positive effects continued for at least six months.

Bad Guys

SOTT Focus: The Pied Piper of the Left & Leftist Contradictions Undecided

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© Agência Brasil/WikiMedia CommonsNoam Chomsky
It is always a matter of concern when people look to a single individual for their worldview. The Right has its ideological spell-binders from Fox to Republican Congressional leaders. Religious fundamentalists have their "Man" who holds the staff of knowledge and soothes or inflames the congregation. Sports fans have TSN and the Military have their one stop mind-shop in Jane's Defence News along with their catalogue of the latest and greatest in destructive war toys. Fact is, every group and sub-group of people, more often than not, defer to something or someone to help shape their views.

This perhaps is a path of least resistance, chosen usually because one can solicit the goings-on of both sides of the fence from one single source rather than discovering the totality for themselves by direct exposure. Life is so much easier when your reality is pre-digested for you. As it happens, this tendency is just as true of the Left as it is of the Right.

This brings us to one representative of the Left World-View who is extremely intellectual and influential, not only in North America, but the world over. To the many Left thinking/leaning, there are not many of his calibre, and so when issues arise, many may acquiesce first to the words of Noam Chomsky before forming their own opinion which usually ends up being a kind of synthesis of Noam's own mind-view.

Eye 1

SOTT Focus: Ponerology 101: Psychopathy at Nuremburg

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© USHMM Photo ArchivesView of the defendants in the dock at the International Military Tribunal trial of war criminals at Nuremberg.
If, as many people are saying nowadays, psychopaths are the ones running our governments, how come we don't know about it? Why isn't it common knowledge, discussed in households and classrooms across the land? Why isn't academia devoting courses to it? In short, why is such a simple, yet revolutionary idea so seemingly secret? The answer may actually be in the question: it is revolutionary, but not in the sense you're thinking! You see, most revolutions are either caused, influenced, or hijacked by psychopaths and quite often this is done by what is called "abuse of psychiatry."

A normal person's actions and reactions, his ideas and moral criteria, all strike the abnormal individual as abnormal. If a person with a personality disorder such as psychopathy considers himself and others like him normal - which is of course significantly easier if he and his friends are in power - then he would consider a normal person different and therefore abnormal.

That explains why, when psychopaths rise to power, as they naturally tend to do, their social systems - including education and medicine/psychiatry - always have the tendency to treat any dissidents - or potential dissidents - as "mentally abnormal". As Lobaczewski wrote, "A normal person strikes a psychopath as a naive, smart-alecky believer in barely comprehensible theories; calling him "crazy" is not all that far away."

Thus, such governments generally control psychology and psychiatry via control of funding and ideationally alert "thought police" in academia, and the myriad ways in which normal people unconsciously respond to a pathological environment begin to be defined as illnesses and "psychiatric solutions", including drugs, are promoted to force normal people to live in a pathological world and think it is normal.

The truth about psychopathy must be degraded and marginalized to prevent it from jeopardizing the system itself, and this very practice is then used as an expedient tool in the hands of the pathological authorities. Anyone who is too knowledgeable about psychopathy will be accused of anything that can be trumped up, including psychological abnormality. They're "crazy", "paranoid", "mentally unstable", and "dangerous".

Comment: Go to Part 7 in the Ponerology 101 series