By William Kremer BBC World Service 20 October 2015
When new drugs are put on the market, clinical trials determine whether they perform better than inactive pills known as "placebos". Research shows that over the last 25 years the difference in effectiveness between real drugs and these fake ones has narrowed - but more in the US than elsewhere. Are Americans really more susceptible to placebo effects, or is something else going on? more...
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Rex Huppke SEPTEMBER 25 2015
If you're like me, you love the idea of meditation but don't have time to do it because it would cut into your TV time. What good are mindfulness and inner peace if you have no clue what's happening on "Game of Thrones"? This presents a problem because, more and more, people are telling us that our fast and wired lifestyles must now include a quest for mindfulness, a greater sense of living in the moment and not letting work stress bring us down. But who has time to be mindful? more... November 11, 2014 by Arjun Walia
“Consciousness creates reality,” a statement that has gained a lot of attention across various alternative media outlets around the world. Make no mistake, consciousness has been (for quite some time) studied by numerous scientists, especially in its relation to quantum physics and how it might be correlated with the nature of our reality. What is consciousness? Consciousness includes a number of things. It’s how we perceive our world, our thoughts, being aware, our intentions and more. more... No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning
February 9, 2015 by Lisa Zyga (Phys.org) —The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once. The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in a "Big Bang" did the universe officially begin. Although the Big Bang singularity arises directly and unavoidably from the mathematics of general relativity, some scientists see it as problematic because the math can explain only what happened immediately after—not at or before—the singularity. more... Mental Balance and Well-Being
Building Bridges Between Buddhism and Western Psychology B. Alan Wallace (Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies) Shauna L. Shapiro (Santa Clara University) Clinical psychology has focused primarily on the diagnosis and treatment of mental disease, and only recently has scientific attention turned to understanding and cultivating positive mental health. The Buddhist tradition, on the other hand, has focused for over 2,500 years on cultivating exceptional states of mental well-being as well as identifying and treating psychological problems. This article attempts to draw on centuries of Buddhist experiential and theoretical inquiry as well as current Western experimental research to highlight specific themes that are particularly relevant to exploring the nature of mental health. Specifically, the authors discuss the nature of mental well-being and then present an innovative model of how to attain such well-being through the cultivation of four types of mental balance: conative, attentional, cognitive, and affective. more... |