Resilience

I accepted his instructions affably, but with little faith, then popped open a bottle of beer and started to get into the rhythm of relaxation. Cast, tug, reel. Swig. Cast, tug, reel. Swig. Cast, tug, reel... Whoa! Something hit my line. Hard. Really hard! I’d never felt anything like that before. My line started spinning out of the reel with a high-pitched whining sound. I cranked it back in as fast I as could, but the drag was set too low and the fish was pulling it back out faster than I could turn the handle.
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Active and experiential therapies, like meditation, martial arts-based movement, symbolic arts and drama, can capture the intensity of emotion and bonding and can lead to healing. Read More

      This is why the old have such a deserved reputation as complainers. If we become preoccupied with our physical selves when we are young we are thought of as hypochondriacs. When we think (and speak) primarily of our aches when we are old, we are just bad company.

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Shared misery can be as exhilarating as a runaway roller coaster. It is the misery experienced alone that sucks us ever downward. One of the functions of movies is to bring us together and cue us to share the joint feelings. We denizens of the human condition are all in it together, whether it be in Haiti, Chile, or even Washington. We can find the human condition in the movies.

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Via Not Exactly Rocket Science: The Times of London has a fascinating, if flawed, piece investigating the different patterns of behavior exhibited by passengers aboard the Titanic and those aboard the Lusitania, which sank three years later. Read More

Last month, when a tragic earthquake struck in Haiti, over 200,000 people died.  Richter scale: 7.0. 

Just over a year ago, in Sichuan province in China, an earthquake of 8.0 struck, killing over at least 68,000 people - many of them children trapped when their schools collapsed.

Saturday, the fifth largest earthquake since 1900 –an 8.8 (earthquakes are measured in a logarithmic scale) – struck in Chile.  So far – although surely the death toll will rise – fewer than 800 people have died.

I was once a member of the love addicts club. I too was in love with love. I have built my career on this issue, working with ordinary people who are lost when it comes to finding and sustaining a healthy relationship, stuck in a cycle of pain and disappointment in others and themselves. The good news is that it is possible to break this cycle!

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Women are finally being looked at more accurately in cinema, though with some constraints...  Read More

Thoughts cause our actions, or do they? We need to stop treating out own minds with the automaticity of tying our shoes or any idiot with a microphone has access to buttons to control us. In between agreeing with thoughts and disagreeing with thoughts, there is a middle path. In the noisy culture we have created we need to learn how to get there. Read More