Blog

Laura's note: Based on this article, I'd say Sarah Silverman gets it. Sarah Silverman may be known for her biting comedy, but her recent exchange with a Twitter troll is being held up as a model of compassion. A few days ago, Silverman sent out a tweet, and a total stranger replied cruelly with nothing but the "c" word. But instead of lashing back or blocking the user, Silverman opted for a compassionate response. "I believe in you. I read ur timeline & I see what ur doing & your...

Synchronizing body, speech, mind, and breath allows you to be completely in the moment, says Temple University professor Alexander deVaron. Alexander deVaron teaches music theory and composition at Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Recently he wondered what would happen if he gave himself permission to sing during formal meditation—This is what he discovered: 4 Reasons to Try Mindful Singing 1) Sometimes you need to break the rules 2) Singing...

In 2002, I wrote a JOPPPAH article, The Power of Beliefs: What Babies are Teaching Us . In it I discuss how young babies already portray a sophisticated and established complex of beliefs and patterns of being in the world. I describe four clinical stories of babies in PPN-oriented BEBA therapy sessions who are expressing very difficult patterns based upon earlier experiences in the womb, during birth and as newborns. Babies and children live in the inner world of their earliest experiences,...

Science has shown music has a way of invoking memory. It’s been used to help people suffering from dementia reconnect to themselves and to their environment. Now, researchers are trying to figure out whether music can be used as therapy for people once considered unreachable. “There is neuroscientific evidence that music is very embedded deep in the brain … and linked to experiences,” said Debra Bakerjian , an associate adjunct professor at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at the...

Reform advocates declared victory today after Wisconsin agreed to shutter two troubled detention centers and take steps advocates hope will drag its juvenile justice system into the 21st century. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker announced today that his administration will close the Lincoln Hills School for Boys and the Copper Lake School for Girls and build at least five new detention centers that will “align with nationally recognized best practices.” The two correctional facilities had become...

My mom was given a diagnosis of lung cancer this past year. And whether I liked it or not, almost midway through my career, it put me squarely in the position of being re-educated about cancer from the other end of the biopsy needle. It also gave me the opportunity to approach my patients with a new resolve in the coming year. My mother lives in Rhode Island, and I live in Ohio. It took weeks for her to get her diagnosis, and I quickly found, as family members of my own patients have told me...

The Family Tree, a Baltimore-based child abuse and neglect prevention organization, in partnership with the Maryland Essentials for Childhood, launched the statewide ACE Interface Project Nov. 15 at Renaissance Fine Arts in Baltimore to combat the growing incidence rate of adverse childhood experiences. Designed in partnership with childhood behavior expert Dr. Robert Anda, The project is focused on building resilience in the developing brains of susceptible youth and building self-healing...

Happy New Year and forget about old-time resolutions! I’d like to pose something different than loosing weight or getting organized: giving ourselves a gift, the gift of attention. I have a very particular activity to recommend – one that served me very well as I describe in Chapter 5: Coming Our as a Survivor in my book Healing My Life from Incest to Joy: “It came to me one morning as I sat in front of my mirror doing my hair and makeup. I looked into my own eyes and said, “I’m proud of...

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts with #MeToo have been used tens of millions of times since the hashtag was initially used in October, when actor Alyssa Milano set off the social media storm by posting, “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet .” Within 24 hours the hashtag had been used on Twitter 825,000 times, and on Facebook, 4.7 million people had used it in 12 million posts. But there’s another “me too” story, about a movement that...

Preschools have a single, all-important mission: getting kids ready to learn. Students should emerge knowing their letters, numbers, and shapes, as well as a certain level of emotional awareness. A new study identifies a uniquely effective way to impart this foundational knowledge: immersion in the arts. It reports low-income children who attended a Head Start program experienced a more robust rise in readiness if their program included daily music, dance, and visual arts classes. [For more...

(Reuters Health) - - Partnerships between teachers and doctors could help students and school staffers better deal with “toxic stress,” suggests a former teacher turned doctor. Pediatricians can help build resilience in both children and teachers to counter the effects of traumatic childhood experiences, poverty and violence, Dr. Kavitha Selvaraj of the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago writes in the journal Pediatrics. “Before I was a pediatrician, I was a teacher, and...

Once certain groups are labeled as criminal or undeserving, or “not like us,” it is easy to enforce supposedly fair and colorblind laws in a discriminatory manner, whether deliberately or subconsciously. It’s an exciting time to be an advocate for drug policy reform and harm reduction. For the first time in decades, people trumpeting the failures of the War on Drugs are being heard, while victories on overdose prevention, syringe exchange, medication assisted treatment, and more are passing...