Faith and Finding your Inner Peace

by Amelia Evans

We live in a society that emphasizes achieving goals and material things. We continually push ourselves daily and we wage a battle within ourselves about what society expects of us and what we truly want.

The stress, negative emotions, turmoil, violent feelings, and overthinking take a big toll on our wellness and mental health. And there comes a point in our lives when we need or are forced to pause, take a deep breath, and think or what we’ve done and the future direction we should take.

Truth be told, we can all be very busy but not get anywhere. Like running on a treadmill and finding that we’re still right where we started. Though we can’t control the things that are happening to us, there are things we can do to find and promote inner peace. Here are some techniques you can follow to help you find that inner calm and quiet: (more…)

A New Hope of Students Suffering Trauma

by Dr. Scott F. Terry & David Shapiro

New Study in Psychological Reports: Transcendental Meditation (TM) Significantly Reduces Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Depression in Students

Before practicing Transcendental Meditation (TM), it was mayhem at our school. A lot of fights were going on, basically every day. People were not friendly, they were mean. When I learned it I noticed it was different, because TM is not just closing your eyes, it is deeper than that. It makes you feel better, makes you more energized and it takes away all your stress. It really, really helps. – 7^th grade student

I used to be really fidgety, I used to move a lot, couldn't' stay in my seat for very long. Now after meditating I can sit down for a whole class without standing up. Before practicing TM, it was hard for me to concentrate; after practicing TM, I could concentrate very well. – 7^th grade student

These children live in communities and go to schools where violence threatens the children and puts them at risk for accumulating high levels of stress and even suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, a chronic and debilitating condition, arises from life-threatening and deeply traumatic events: war, sexual abuse, violence and natural disasters. Symptoms include nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety, fear, hyper-vigilance, emotional numbness, anger, and violent behavior, often leading to the abuse of drugs and alcohol. PTSD is a chronic, debilitating condition that may last a lifetime if not treated effectively. (more…)

How to be Spiritual Amidst this Chaos?

By Dr. Stewart Bitkoff

Circumstances have overtaken man. His old languages are not sufficient to describe what is happening, and what is about to happen. To think in terms of a millennium or such tame concepts as ‘the eleventh hour’ is ridiculous. Better that he should realize that he is in an era which might be more accurately described as the ‘eighth day of the week.”  Idries Shah (more…)

The Natural Way to Beat Depression

Have you ever sought medical help for depression only to be given a costly prescription for antidepressant medication? Perhaps you have been prescribed a combination of drugs in an attempt to find the right formula for you. Or have you found the side effects from drug therapy worse than the depression itself. The most common antidepressants have adverse effects ranging from irritability to stomach upset to loss of libido. Even if your depression has lifted, are you satisfied with the cost and side effects of prescription drugs?

For many people, natural remedies offer the best solution. Herbal remedies and simple changes in diet are often at least as effective in lifting a depressed person’s mood as some of the more common prescription drugs, at a fraction of the cost and without unpleasant side effects.  (more…)

Free Tips to Treat Depression ebook

Depression is a scourge of modern living, affecting millions from all backgrounds. This free ebook describes a range of strategies that you can put in place to start fighting back at this debilitating condition.

Download Tips to Treat Depression from the Self Help Sanctum

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Breathe deeply, love deeply, live deeply

Breathing is one of life's most basic necessities. Adults take in an average of almost 25,000 breaths each day, and that's just at rest. While it's true that most of us don't stop to think about the breathing we do each day, it's important to recognize the health benefits of doing so. Take in a breath right now. It comes so naturally, doesn't it? You may not realize that you can greatly improve the way you feel inside and out, just by consciously controlling how you breathe, for even as little as an hour each day.

When you breathe in the air around you, your lungs transfer the oxygen into your blood. This oxygen is necessary for life's building block, our cells, to live and create within us. When you breathe out, carbon dioxide and other metabolic wastes are removed from the blood and back out into the air. For those with impaired respiratory function, such as cardiac patients or asthma sufferers, the result of improper breathing is a catastrophic build-up of toxins and extremely low levels of oxygen in the blood. The good news is that even those of us with impaired respiration can benefit from intentionally controlling our breathing. (more…)

Panic Attacks and Anxiety

Part of the reason for the success of the human species is that we're designed for survival. In pre-civilization days we held a healthy fear of our environment. This fear made us alert to potential predators, gave us an automatic reaction (the fight or flight response) to danger, and ultimately allowed our genes to be passed on and continually improved.

Though many former environmental dangers no longer exist, this inherent nervousness remains part of our basic design. Many people are able to keep this reaction under conscious control, but for a significant few its impact can negatively impact their quality of life, making even routine activities a waking nightmare. (more…)

Dealing With Stress

By Zoe Young at Answers in Writing

Stress develops from how we see things; how we perceive the world around us changes how we feel.  Do you take it all in or do it one step at a time?  Do you look at all that is to be done and believe it has to happen now, that you must take care of it right away?  Are you overwhelmed by things out of your control?  Do you try to control things, thus only adding onto what you should do?  How we interact with what happens around us has a lot to do with how we feel.  (more…)

Seeing Past The Illusion Of Fear

by Zoe Young at Answersinwriting.com

Whether you realize it or not, a lot of our actions and reactions are based upon fear.  For we believe what has happened will happen again.  We let our imaginations run wild with the possibilities, whether harmful or not.  We see the world through eyes connected to our past, for we can not imagine a future unrelated to something we haven't experienced, if it has happened before, it will happen again.  But life doesn't work this way, there is no pattern of repetition except in our minds.  We even see something as the same even though it is unrelatable.  We like to connect, even if it's bad.  We will then feel more comfortable, for we have already experienced this and we can feel safe because it makes sense. (more…)

The Illusion of Fear

Fear is part of our evolutionary physiology. The "fight or flight" response has helped your ancestors, back to the dawn of time, survive long enough for you to be reading this. The trouble is that while modern life doesn't present us many life or death situations, its complexity causes the fight or flight response to kick in way more often than is good for us. If we're not careful the result can be irrational fear, leading to problems of anxiety, stress, depression, self-doubt and ultimately paralysis of the life force that drives the fulfillment of our very purpose. (more…)