THRIVING IN TIMES OF STRUGGLE

Comments? Send me a text message. To flourish as you age, you need to keep your brain as healthy as possible, and you need to manage your mental states. This episode deals with the brain health side of the equation.  There are eight Behavioral Roots of Brain Health  that, if addressed together, can help you to keep your brain healthy and flourish as you age.  This episode focuses on how good medic...

Comments? Send me a text message. To flourish as you age, you need to keep your brain as healthy as possible, and you need to manage your mental states. This episode deals with the brain health side of the equation.  There are eight Behavioral Roots of Brain Health  that, if addressed together, can help you to keep your brain healthy and flourish as you age.  This episode focuses on how good sleep...

Comments? Send me a text message. To flourish as you age, you need to keep your brain as healthy as possible, and you need to manage your mental states. This episode deals with the brain health side of the equation.  There are eight Behavioral Roots of Brain Health  that, if addressed together, can help you to keep your brain healthy and flourish as you age.  This episode focuses on ingestion, tak...

Comments? Send me a text message. To flourish as you age, you need to keep your brain as healthy as possible, and you need to manage your mental states. This episode deals with the brain health side of the equation.  There are eight Behavioral Roots of Brain Health  that, if addressed together, can help you to keep your brain healthy and flourish as you age.  This episode focuses on Stress Managem...

Comments? Send me a text message. To flourish as you age, you need to keep your brain as healthy as possible, and you need to manage your mental states. This episode deals with the brain health side of the equation.  There are eight Behavioral Roots of Brain Health  that, if addressed together, can help you to keep your brain healthy and flourish as you age.  This episode focuses on Social Engagem...

Comments? Send me a text message. To flourish as you age, you need to keep your brain as healthy as possible, and you need to manage your mental states. This episode deals with the brain health side of the equation.  There are eight Behavioral Roots of Brain Health  that, if addressed together, can help you to keep your brain healthy and flourish as you age.  This episode focuses on Mental Stimula...

Comments? Send me a text message. To flourish as you age, you need to keep your brain as healthy as possible, and you need to manage your mental states. This episode deals with the brain health side of the equation.  There are eight Behavioral Roots of Brain Health  that, if addressed together, can help you to keep your brain healthy and flourish as you age.  This episode focuses on Physical Exerc...

Comments? Send me a text message. To flourish as you age, you need to keep your brain as healthy as possible, and you need to manage your mental states. This episode introduces the brain health side of the equation.  There are eight behavioral and lifestyle areas that, together, have a profound impact on the health of your brain and your ability to flourish as you age.  We now call these eight are...

Comments? Send me a text message. No matter how old we are, we should live " an intentional life. " Doesn't that sound right? We should make the most of our longevity, live deeply with meaning and purpose as we age.  Old age shouldn't just happen to us, we should intentionally turn it into a great adventure of discovery and fulfillment. But does this mean we must continue to st...

Comments? Send me a text message. Why do all beginning artists draw stick figures? Why is it so difficult to draw an accurate picture of what we see?  The reason, I believe, is that unskilled artists draw  concepts of what they see rather than drawing what they actually see. Their conceptual brain dominates and prevents the sensory brain  from guiding the drawing.   Skilled artists have learned to...

Comments? Send me a text message. In this reading of an article I wrote for 3rd Act Magazine I suggest that equanimity is a key to aging well. I draw a distinction between what might be called standard equanimity - remaining even-tempered in the face of both pleasure and pain - and what I'm calling "transcendent equanimity."   Transcendent equanimity is a state of mind that not only...

Comments? Send me a text message. In this podcast I offer a full reading of the Mar-A-Lago indictment of Trump and Nauta.  I believe it is important that we all understand the full scope and gravity of the charges and recognize that the Justice Department is not likely to make allegations in an indictment unless it has ample evidence to back up the allegations.  Of course, Trump, Nuata and their l...

Comments? Send me a text message. In the introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of her  important  book, MINDFULNESS (1989), Harvard psychologists Ellen J. Langer makes the following observation. “In the 1970s, as social psychology was experiencing what was called ‘the cognitive revolution,’ studying the kinds of thoughts people were having, I began to wonder whether people were thinking at...

Comments? Send me a text message. Dan Cohen is the Johnny Appleseed of personalized music. While the fabled Appleseed traveled the country planting apple seeds, Cohen travels from coast to coast bringing iPods, headphones and customized music playlists to people with dementia. Cohen's work was featured in the award winning documentary ALIVE INSIDE.  I spoke with Dan about how he got started i...

Comments? Send me a text message. Learn how to  create and use  personalized music to promote physical and spiritual healing for you and your loved ones.  Dan Cohen has championed the use of personalized music for people with dementia, in fact, personalized music does wonders for anyone who is institutionalized. Dan has seem dramatic evidence that listening to one's favorite music - often mus...

Comments? Send me a text message. Our mind becomes muddled when our two hemispheres fail to cooperate and when  left hemisphere perspectives dominate our thinking. I believe that music can help us restore balanced cooperation of our hemispheres by strengthening right hemisphere perspectives.   Support the show If you want to support my work, click above, subscribe to the MINDRAMP  Podcast, or sign...

Comments? Send me a text message. How does music promote the health and development of our brains?  Learn how music can engage  the protective factors associated with  MINDRAMP's eight Behavioral Roots of Brain Health .   MINDRAMP favors a "risk management" approach to brain health, which involves minimizing behaviors and conditions that put your brain at greater risk and adopting b...

Comments? Send me a text message. This episode, the first of three episodes on music, explores the purpose and power of music. MINDRAMP's mission is to provide evidence-based information that can help you to live long and to live well. We focus on keeping our brains healthy and on managing our minds to promote happiness and equanimity.  Can music play a role in these goals? Yes, it can!  Musi...

Comments? Send me a text message. In this episode we examine the role EMOTIONS play in muddling our minds and how emotional regulation can help in the un-muddling process. We introduce the important concept of EMOTIONAL GRANULARITY. Neuroscientist and emotions expert Lisa Feldman Barrett expounds this idea, which suggests that emotions are constructed and that we only feel those emotions that we c...

Comments? Send me a text message. In this episode I explore how we can use Buddhist psychology - specifically the Four Noble Truths - to help us un-muddle our minds.  Buddhism's Four Noble Truths suggest that our minds get muddled because we are too often afflicted by suffering and frustration that is caused by attachment and the desire to resist inevitable change. The Four Truths suggest, th...

Comments? Send me a text message. In this episode I introduce a new term I am using - "Hemisphere Gelassenheit." It is a combination of the german word, "gelassenheit," coined by the medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart and the hemisphere hypothesis as expounded by the contemporary scholar iain McCilchrist. Gelassenheit is a process of letting go. The full process involves...

Comments? Send me a text message. What do people undergo when they have a mystical experience, and why would a mystical experience help us to un-muddle our minds?  In this episode I explain how mysticism is an expression of what I call hemispheric gelassenheit. I use first person accounts of mystical experiences from neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor, the philosopher jiddu Krishnamurti and the prim...

Comments? Send me a text message. A mystical experience, similar to the "enlightenment" described by Buddhists and other contemplative practices, involves a disillusion of self and a sense of unity with something grander than ourselves.  We  describes this something-grander-than-ourselves, in various ways - as God, as Tao, as the natural order and so on.   In this episode we explore the...

Comments? Send me a text message. When you think of brain cells, you probably think of neurons. That's perfectly understandable.  Discussions of the brain almost always focus on  neurons. But there is another family of brain cells, (glial cells) that, by some estimates, outnumber neurons by 10 to 1!.  Even if the the percentage is more like 50/50, that's a lot of cells - billions! Based...

Comments? Send me a text message. Neuroscientist Dr, Jeff Darling and I discuss various aspects of aging, including"  Why is the topic of aging of interest to a young neuroscientist? How to define aging. the "wear-and-tear" hypothesis of aging. What is inflammageing? How to age successfully? Support the show If you want to support my work, click above, subscribe to the MINDRAMP  Pod...