Dear Puran & Susanna,
I have been practicing Heart Rhythm Meditation for about a year, and have been getting good results. However, over the last 3 months I have been having trouble with uncontrollable convulsions. It happens during Earth Breath and Fire Breath, but mostly during Fire. It does not always happen, and most of the time I am aware. Please let me know if this is something that I should worry about, or how to deal with it.
With love Ron

Dear Ron,
It sounds like you’re having Kundalini symptoms within the range that is not yet dangerous. (more…)

Here’s a wonderful interview with Ishmael Beah, former child soldier from Sierra Leone. Beah was traumatized by violence as a child, then forced into a life terrorizing others with torture and murder. His life was much like that of the child soldiers shown in the movie “Blood Diamond”. (Here’s a nice review of the film: newyorker.com)
Yet despite his own pain, and the guilt of what he’s done, Beah believes that humans are basically good.
This is a great illustration of the power of the heart to heal from any trauma and to find redemption from any sin.

Puran & Susanna

Here’s a nice article from the New York Times Sunday Magazine (9/16/07) entitled “Do We Really know What Makes Us Healthy?”
The author, Gary Taubes, argues that the long-term clinical double-blind epidemiological studies that are medicine’s gold standard are rather poor at delivering what we really want to know: what causes health and what causes illness.
Perhaps part of the reason is the extremely limited scope of these studies - which by design can only study the correlation or association between two variables, such as smoking and cancer, without knowing if there is a causal relationship.
The holistic approach proceeds in the opposite direction. We start with an understanding of what is health, which includes the physical, but also the emotional and the spiritual dimensions of the human being. This allows us to have an idea of what health is, rather than simply focusing on health as the absence of disease. More on this important topic to come!

Puran & Susanna

Here’s a recent article from the Wall Street Journal about a management professor who hopes to teach leadership skills by identifying the different parts of the brain that are used by “visionary leaders” as compared to “non-visionary leaders”.

http://online.wsj.com/

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We’re saddened to hear of actor and writer Owen Wilson’s apparent suicide attempt on August 27th. So many struggle with depression and the feeling that life is too difficult, too painful to go on. Our hearts go out to Mr. Wilson and to everyone who bears this burden.
We experience two ways of helping the heart out of depression. (more…)

Hi!I’m so excited that I have finally found this site so that I might share with you…and you with me. I am a teacher in the inner city of Buffalo N.Y. I love my job. The children that I teach come to school with all kinds of baggage. I don’t think I ever opened my heart to share any of my experiences with anyone. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal (9/18/07) has a great article on fitness legend Jack LaLanne, who built a chain of gyms and developed several kinds of weightlifting machines. (You must be a subscriber to read the article).

The article is a great example of the following Exercise for Life:

When the lack of focus, initiative, persistence or success of others around you annoys you, take this as a signal that you need to improve your own self-mastery through concentration on some specific, personal goal.

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I’m a reporter with Investor’s Business Daily. I write the “News For You” column, which gives practical advice to our readers.
Does the Institute have any statistics or studies to show that more business people are meditating as a way to relieve stress? I gather this may be a slight trend, but I need to cite some fact to support this.Thanks for your help.
Morey Stettner

Dear Morey,
Thanks for writing. I’m the co-founder of The Institute for Applied Meditation; I’ve also had a long career in business, including serving as the VP at a mutual fund company in Boston. I read IBD occasionally, and it’s an honor to have this contact with someone from such a respected paper.
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Here’s an interesting article which shows the difficulty of trying to change your heart with your mind.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk

This woman wrote a book on her experience of trying to follow the self-help advice of several major books, and how it made her life worse.

Don’t try to follow someone else’s idea of how you should be. That approach cannot possibly be right for you. Even if the actions are right, the approach is wrong, because only following your own heart is right for you.

Also, don’t follow your mind. This sounds like a paradox — what do you follow if not your mind? Well, you must follow your heart. It will lead you to the unexpected, the terrifying, the new, toward your longing and your fulfillment.

Susanna