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Inflammation: What Is This Health Buzzword and Why Should You Care About It?
Chronic inflammation has been linked with many physical health issues, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, arthritis, and cancer. Interestingly, the impact of inflammation isn’t limited to physical health issues.
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Benefitting Ourselves While Benefitting Others: The Importance of Generativity
“How to Talk About Dying” was the name of one of the “Most Emailed” articles on The New York Times website in early July. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, written by bestselling author and MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient Dr. Atul Gawande, has an average of 5 out of 5 stars with…
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Outreach Event: Thought Suppression vs. Mindfulness!
Irene Tung led the yellow jeep activity based on Wegner’s classic white bear psychology study! Infinity, pizza, spiders, shoes, pizza, iPhones, sleep, pizza, code names, iPads, games, pizza… When we asked elementary students to think about anything these were the responses. However, when we asked elementary students to think about anything but a yellow jeep, the…
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Outreach Event: Brain Awareness Week 2015!
Nicco Reggente leads the discussion on cognitive psychology! Imagine your typical morning. You crave some sugary cereal to get you fueled for the day ahead. You dash out the door to realize you forgot your keys. And – especially for you teenagers – as you’re heading out to school, you realize that you’d rather go…
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Surrendering to Creativity: The Psychology of Remembering to Breathe (Part 3 of 3)
Up until graduate school, I often indulged the myth that good writing was a sacred thing to be done under the most precise conditions. Akin to knowing without a timer when the soufflee has finished (sorry, I have holidays sweets on the mind), the creativity dedicated to a well-written piece had to be carefully cultured…
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A Meditation On Meditation: Behavioral Flexibility and Success
As an undergraduate I worked for a man who was, if nothing else, compelling. Tall and trim, with a bushy handlebar mustache, slicked back hair, and a propensity for pulling out and smoking an e-cigarette in the middle of lab meetings, my adviser could often be heard shouting expletives at his computer from down the…
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Surrendering to Creativity: The Psychology of Remembering To Breathe (Part 2 of 3)
“Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.” – T.S. Eliot What does it mean, for anxiety to be the handmaiden to creativity? Reading this quote from T.S. Eliot, my mind wandered to think about Shae and Sansa. For those less obsessed with George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones than me, Shae is Sansa Stark’s handmaiden in the imaginary…
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Surrendering to Creativity; the Psychology of Remembering to Breathe (Part 1 of 3)
The author’s dad, Yogaman Bill, letting go of anxiety and creating beauty on the beach. “Work done with anxiety about results is far inferior to work done without such anxiety, in the calm of self-surrender…” ~ The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 41 I stumbled upon this quote earlier this week, as I…
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New research: From Screen to Green: What happens to kids social skills when they go cold turkey on all media?
The fact is we all stare at screens more than we would like and many of us rely on these tools to communicate with others, even during times when we should be spending quality time with our families and friends. So does all this time staring at screens, which may take time away from looking…
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E. coli, food, and mood: How toxins in food could affect not only your belly, but also your brain
It’s well-known that toxin-producing bacteria in food, such as E. coli, can affect your belly — often not for the better — but research by UCLA’s Naomi Eisenberger, Michael Irwin, and others now indicates that food toxins may influence your mood, as well. In a study in which I am glad I was not a participant,…