David Lynch Explains How Meditation Boosts Our Creativity (Plus Free Resources to Help You Start Meditating)

in Creativity, Film, Health | January 17th, 2017

David Lynch med­i­tates, and he med­i­tates hard. Begin­ning his prac­tice in earnest after it helped him solve a cre­ative prob­lem dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of his break­out 1977 film Eraser­head, he has con­tin­ued med­i­tat­ing assid­u­ous­ly ever since, going so far as to found the David Lynch Foun­da­tion for Con­scious­ness-Based Edu­ca­tion and Peace and pub­lish a pro-med­i­ta­tion book called Catch­ing the Big Fish.

It might seem non­sen­si­cal to hear an artist of the grotesque like Lynch speak rap­tur­ous­ly about voy­ag­ing into his own con­scious­ness, let alone in his frac­tured all-Amer­i­can, askew-Jim­my-Stew­art man­ner, but he does med­i­tate for a prac­ti­cal rea­son: it gives him ideas.

Only by med­i­tat­ing, he says, can he dive down and catch the “big fish” he uses as ingre­di­ents in his inim­itable film, music, and visu­al art. You can hear more of his thoughts on med­i­ta­tion, con­scious­ness, and cre­ativ­i­ty in his nine-minute speech above.

If you’d like to hear more, the video just above offers a near­ly two-hour pre­sen­ta­tion at UC Berke­ley with Lynch as its star. You’ll also hear from out­spo­ken quan­tum physi­cist John Hagelin and Fred Travis, direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Brain, Con­scious­ness and Cog­ni­tion Mahar­ishi Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­age­ment. Some of what they say might make good sense to you: after all, we could all use a method to clear our minds so we can cre­ate what we need to cre­ate. Some of what they say might strike you as total non­sense. But if you feel tempt­ed to dis­miss all as too bizarre for seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion, you might med­i­tate, as it were, on oth­er things Lynchi­an: back­wards-talk­ing dwarves, sev­ered ears on sub­ur­ban lawns, alien babies, women liv­ing in radi­a­tors, sit­com fam­i­lies in rab­bit suits. He’s cer­tain­ly pitched us weird­er con­cepts than med­i­ta­tion.

For some sec­u­lar intro­duc­tions to med­i­ta­tion, you may wish to try out some of these resources.

–UCLA’s Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion Ses­sions

–Insight Med­i­ta­tion Center’s Free 6‑Part Intro to Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion

–Stream 18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

–Med­i­ta­tion 101: A Short, Ani­mat­ed Beginner’s Guide

–Philoso­pher Sam Har­ris Leads You Through a 26-Minute Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion

–Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in April, 2013.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

Allen Gins­berg Teach­es You How to Med­i­tate with a Rock Song Fea­tur­ing Bob Dylan on Bass

 

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Meditation is Replacing Detention in Baltimore’s Public Schools, and the Students Are Thriving

in Education, Health, K-12 | January 4th, 2017

By now, most peo­ple are famil­iar with the term “school-to-prison pipeline,” the descrip­tion of a sys­tem that fun­nels trou­bled stu­dents through dis­ci­pli­nary pro­gram after pro­gram. Deten­tions, sus­pen­sions, and often expul­sions fur­ther aggra­vate many stu­dents’ already dif­fi­cult lives, and send them “back to the ori­gin of their angst and unhappiness—their home envi­ron­ments or their neigh­bor­hoods,” writes Car­la Amu­rao for PBS’ Tavis Smi­ley Reports. Harsh dis­ci­pli­nary poli­cies don’t actu­al­ly change behav­ior, and “sta­tis­tics reflect that these poli­cies dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly tar­get stu­dents of col­or and those with a his­to­ry of abuse, neglect, pover­ty or learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties.”

In short, stu­dents come to school with sig­nif­i­cant stress­es and set­backs, and are them­selves treat­ed as prob­lems to be quar­an­tined or forced out. But why not instead teach those students—why not teach all students—effective means of cop­ing with stress and set­backs? I can think of almost no more use­ful a set of skills to car­ry into adult­hood, or into a trou­bled home or neigh­bor­hood sit­u­a­tion. As the CBS This Morn­ing seg­ment above reports, one school in Bal­ti­more is attempt­ing to so equip their stu­dents, with a yoga and med­i­ta­tion pro­gram dur­ing and after school that takes the place of deten­tion and oth­er pun­ish­ments.

The Robert W. Cole­man Ele­men­tary School adopt­ed a twice-a-day yoga and mind­ful­ness prac­tice dur­ing school hours for all stu­dents, called “Mind­ful Moments”; and an after-school pro­gram called Holis­tic Me, which “hosts 120 male and female stu­dents,” writes Newsweek, “and involves yoga, breath­ing exer­cis­es and med­i­ta­tive activ­i­ties. Dis­rup­tive stu­dents are brought to the Mind­ful Moment Room for breath­ing prac­tices and dis­cus­sion with a coun­selor and are instruct­ed on how to man­age their emo­tions.” As we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed on this site, these kinds of activ­i­ties have been shown in research stud­ies to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce stress, anx­i­ety, and depres­sion and to improve con­cen­tra­tion and mem­o­ry.

In the Holis­tic Me pro­gram at Cole­man, “which focus­es on prekinder­gar­den through fifth-grade stu­dents,” admin­is­tra­tors already noticed a dif­fer­ence in the first year. “Instead of the stu­dents fight­ing or lash­ing out,” says prin­ci­pal Carlil­lian Thomp­son in the video above, they start­ed to use words to solve their prob­lems.” None of the stu­dents in the pro­gram have received sus­pen­sions or deten­tions, and many have become lead­ers and high achiev­ers. The pro­gram was found­ed in 2001 by broth­ers Atman and Ali Smith and their friend Andres Gon­za­lez, all Bal­ti­more locals. In the past 15 years, their Holis­tic Life Foun­da­tion and its part­ners have offered a vari­ety of enrich­ment activ­i­ties but focused pri­mar­i­ly on yoga and mind­ful­ness prac­tices.

Using these tech­niques, stu­dents learn to resolve con­flicts peace­ful­ly and to reduce the amount of emo­tion­al tur­moil in their lives. Rather than fur­ther alien­at­ing or trau­ma­tiz­ing already stressed-out kids, this kind of inter­ven­tion pre­pares them for aca­d­e­m­ic and social resilience. The foun­da­tion has rapid­ly expand­ed since 2015, receiv­ing fed­er­al fund­ing and deliv­er­ing pro­grams to Char­lottesville, Min­neapo­lis, Madi­son, and abroad. It may not have changed the course of “school-to-prison pipeline” poli­cies just yet, but it has shown a con­struc­tive way for­ward for oth­er schools like Baltimore’s Pat­ter­son High, which has adopt­ed a 15-minute yoga and mind­ful­ness prac­tice at the begin­ning and end of each day for every one of its stu­dents.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

Stream 18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

Philoso­pher Sam Har­ris Leads You Through a 26-Minute Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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200,000 Years of Staggering Human Population Growth Shown in an Animated Map

in Health, History, Life, Science | December 9th, 2016

Last night, dur­ing a talk on his new book Rais­ing the Floor, long­time labor leader and cur­rent senior fel­low at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Andy Stern told the sto­ry of a king and a chess­mas­ter engaged in pitched bat­tle. “If you win,” said the over­con­fi­dent king, “you may have any­thing you desire.” Lo, the chess­mas­ter wins the game, but being a hum­ble man asks the king only to pro­vide him with some rice. The king smug­ly agrees to his eccen­tric con­di­tions: he must place a grain of rice on the first square of the chess­board, then dou­ble the amount of each suc­ces­sive square. Once he reach­es the mid­dle, the king stops and has the chess­mas­ter exe­cut­ed. The request would have cost him his entire king­dom and more.

Stern used the sto­ry to illus­trate the expo­nen­tial growth of tech­nol­o­gy, which now advances at a rate we can nei­ther con­fi­dent­ly pre­dict nor con­trol. Some­thing very sim­i­lar has hap­pened to the human pop­u­la­tion in the past two-hun­dred years, as you can see illus­trat­ed in the video above from the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry.

Evolv­ing some 200,000 years ago in Sub-Saha­ran Africa, and migrat­ing across the globe some 100,000 years ago, mod­ern humans remained rel­a­tive­ly few in num­ber for sev­er­al thou­sand years. That is, until the tech­no­log­i­cal break­through of agri­cul­ture. “By AD 1,” the video text tells us, “world pop­u­la­tion reached approx­i­mate­ly 170 mil­lion peo­ple.”

After a very rapid expan­sion, the num­bers rose and fell slow­ly in the ensu­ing cen­turies as wars, dis­ease, and famines dec­i­mat­ed pop­u­la­tions. World pop­u­la­tion reached only 180 mil­lion by the year 200 AD, then dwin­dled through the Mid­dle Ages, only pick­ing up again slow­ly around 700. Through­out this his­to­ri­o­graph­ic mod­el of pop­u­la­tion growth, the video info­graph­ic pro­vides help­ful sym­bols and leg­ends that chart his­toric cen­ters like the Roman Empire and Han Dynasty, and show major world events like the Bubon­ic plague.

Then we reach the world-shak­ing dis­rup­tions that were the birth of Cap­i­tal­ism, the Atlantic slave trade, and the Sci­en­tif­ic and Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tions, when “mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy and med­i­cine bring faster growth.”

That’s quite the under­state­ment. The growth, like the grains of rice on the chess­board, pro­ceed­ed expo­nen­tial­ly, reach­ing 1 bil­lion peo­ple around 1800, then explod­ing to over 7 bil­lion today. As the yel­low dots—each rep­re­sent­ing a node of 1 mil­lion people—take over the map, the video quick­ly becomes an alarm­ing call to action. While the num­bers are lev­el­ing off, and fer­til­i­ty has dropped, “if cur­rent trends con­tin­ue,” we’re told, “glob­al pop­u­la­tion will peak at 11 bil­lion around 2100.” Peak num­bers could be low­er, or sub­stan­tial­ly high­er, depend­ing on the pre­dic­tive val­ue of the mod­els and any num­ber of unknow­able vari­ables.

Andy Stern’s research has focused on how we build economies that sup­port our mas­sive glob­al population—as machines stand poised in the next decade or so to edge mil­lions of blue and white col­lar work­ers out of an already pre­car­i­ous labor mar­ket. The Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry asks some dif­fer­ent, but no less urgent ques­tions that take us even far­ther into the future. How can the planet’s finite, and dwin­dling, resources, with our cur­rent abuse and mis­use of them, sup­port such large and grow­ing num­bers of peo­ple?

It may take anoth­er tech­no­log­i­cal break­through to mit­i­gate the dam­age caused by pre­vi­ous tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs. Or it may take an enor­mous, rev­o­lu­tion­ary polit­i­cal shift. In either case, the “choic­es we make today” about fam­i­ly plan­ning, con­sump­tion, envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tion, and con­ser­va­tion “affect the future of our species—and all life on Earth.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Crowd­ed House: How the World’s Pop­u­la­tion Grew to 7 Bil­lion Peo­ple

Hans Rosling Uses Ikea Props to Explain World of 7 Bil­lion Peo­ple

The Birth Con­trol Hand­book: The Under­ground Stu­dent Pub­li­ca­tion That Let Women Take Con­trol of Their Bod­ies (1968)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How Literature Can Improve Mental Health: Take a Free Course Featuring Stephen Fry, Ian McKellen, Melvyn Bragg & More

in Health, Literature, Online Courses | September 19th, 2016

The great 18th cen­tu­ry writer Dr. Samuel John­son, who suf­fered from severe bouts of depres­sion, said “the only end of writ­ing is to enable the read­er bet­ter to enjoy life or bet­ter to endure it.”

So…is it true? Can a poem help you cope with grief? Can a son­net stir your soul to hope?

The Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick have teamed up with some famous faces, and a team of doc­tors to tack­le these ques­tions and oth­ers like them, in a free online course on Future­Learn.

Poets, writ­ers and actors like Stephen Fry, Ian McK­ellen, Melvyn Bragg, Mark Had­don (The Curi­ous Inci­dent of the Dog in the Night Time), Ben Okri (The Fam­ished Road), Rachel Kel­ly (Black Rain­bow) and oth­ers, will dis­cuss their own work and the work of famous writ­ers like Austen, Shake­speare and Wordsworth — explor­ing how they can impact men­tal health and why works of writ­ing are so often turned to in times of cri­sis.

Here’s Stephen Fry on the plea­sure of poet­ry:

Plus through­out the 6‑week course doc­tors will offer a med­ical per­spec­tive, giv­ing an insight into dif­fer­ent men­tal health con­di­tions.

The course is offered through Future­Learn which means it’s bro­ken into chunks — so you can do it step by step. Future­Learn also fea­tures lots of dis­cus­sion so you can share your ideas with oth­er learn­ers, which often can be as ben­e­fi­cial as the course mate­r­i­al (as one pre­vi­ous learn­er put it “a real­ly won­der­ful expe­ri­ence and I’ve loved the feed­back and com­ments from fel­low course mem­bers”).

Here’s a run­through of what’s on the syl­labus. The course focus­es on six themes:

  1. Stress: In poet­ry, the word “stress” refers to the empha­sis of cer­tain syl­la­bles in a poem’s metre. How might the met­ri­cal “stress­es” of poet­ry help us to cope with the men­tal and emo­tion­al stress­es of mod­ern life?
  2. Heart­break: Is heart­break a med­ical con­di­tion? What can Sidney’s son­nets and Austen’s Sense and Sen­si­bil­i­ty teach us about suf­fer­ing and recov­er­ing from a bro­ken heart?
  3. Bereave­ment: The psy­chol­o­gist Elis­a­beth Kübler-Ross famous­ly pro­posed that there are five stages of grief. How might Shakespeare’s Ham­let and poems by Wordsworth and Hardy help us to think dif­fer­ent­ly about the process of griev­ing?
  4. Trau­ma: PTSD or “shell­shock” has long been asso­ci­at­ed with the trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ences of sol­diers in World War 1. How is the con­di­tion depict­ed in war poet­ry of the era? Can poems and plays offer us an insight into oth­er sources of trau­ma, includ­ing mis­car­riage and assault?
  5. Depres­sion and Bipo­lar: The writer Rachel Kel­ly sub­ti­tles her mem­oir Black Rain­bow “how words healed me – my jour­ney through depres­sion”. Which texts have peo­ple turned to dur­ing peri­ods of depres­sion, and why? What can we learn from lit­er­a­ture about the links between bipo­lar dis­or­der and cre­ativ­i­ty?
  6. Age­ing and Demen­tia: One of the great­est stud­ies of age­ing in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture is Shakespeare’s King Lear. Is it help­ful to think about this play in the con­text of demen­tia? Why are suf­fer­ers of age-relat­ed mem­o­ry loss often still able to recall the poems they have learned “by heart”?

Start the course for free today.

Jess Weeks is a copy­writer at Future­Learn. The one poem which helps her endure is The Orange by Wendy Cope.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Study Finds That Read­ing Tol­stoy & Oth­er Great Nov­el­ists Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

Book Read­ers Live Longer Lives, Accord­ing to New Study from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

New Study: Immers­ing Your­self in Art, Music & Nature Might Reduce Inflam­ma­tion & Increase Life Expectan­cy

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How to Get Started with Yoga: Free Yoga Lessons on YouTube

in Health, How to Learn for Free, Religion | September 9th, 2016

If you’ve dipped even a toe into the yoga world late­ly, you’ve per­haps noticed con­tro­ver­sies rag­ing from East to West about the Hin­du prac­tice of med­i­ta­tive pos­tures (āsanas). Is yoga reli­gious? If so, does prac­tic­ing it in schools vio­late reli­gious free­doms; does the Indi­an government’s endorse­ment of yoga slight Indi­an Mus­lims? Is yoga an ancient spir­i­tu­al prac­tice or mod­ern inven­tion? Is West­ern yoga “cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion,” as both cam­pus groups and Hin­du groups allege? Is there such a thing as “Real Yoga” and is “McYo­ga” killing it?

These ques­tions and more get debat­ed on a dai­ly basis online, on cam­pus, and in state­hous­es and coun­cils. No one is like­ly to find res­o­lu­tion any time soon. How­ev­er, you may have also heard about the health ben­e­fits of yoga, trum­pet­ed every­where, includ­ing Har­vard Med­ical School and the Mayo Clin­ic, and you can safe­ly ignore the pol­i­tics, and learn the phys­i­cal prac­tice in any num­ber of ways.

Like mil­lions of oth­er peo­ple, you may find that it helps you “fight stress and find seren­i­ty” as Mayo writes; or become a “mind­ful eater,” boost “weight loss and main­te­nance,” enhance fit­ness, and improve car­dio­vas­cu­lar health, accord­ing to Har­vard.

Var­i­ous teach­ers and schools will make oth­er claims about yoga’s prac­ti­cal and spir­i­tu­al effects. These you are free to take on faith, expe­ri­ence your­self, or check against sci­en­tif­ic sources. And when you’re ready to get out of your head and con­nect your mind and body, try a yoga class. Skip the gym and Lul­ule­mon. You don’t even have to leave your home or get out your wal­let. We have sev­er­al free online yoga class­es rep­re­sent­ed here, from rep­utable, expe­ri­enced teach­ers offer­ing pos­es for begin­ners and for expe­ri­enced yogis, and for all sorts of ail­ments and types of phys­i­cal train­ing.

The first, Yoga with Adriene, opens things up gen­tly with “Yoga for Com­plete Begin­ners,” at the top, a 20 minute “home yoga work­out” that requires no spe­cial props or pri­or expe­ri­ence. From here, you can browse Adriene’s Youtube chan­nel and find playlists like the 38-video “Foun­da­tions of Yoga” and 10-video “Yoga for Run­ners” sequence, fur­ther down. You can also read a pro­file of Adriene in The New York Times.

Should Adriene’s approach strike you as too casu­al with the yog­ic tra­di­tion, you might find the instruc­tion of Sri K. Pat­tab­hi Jois more to your lik­ing. His one-hour “Pri­ma­ry Series Ash­tan­ga” video, above, opens with this dis­claimer: “The fol­low­ing video is NOT an Exer­cise Video. It is intend­ed for edu­ca­tion­al, artis­tic, and spir­i­tu­al pur­pos­es only.” The text also warns that Mas­ter Sri K. Pat­tab­hi Jois’ yoga prac­tice is taught “to six high­ly expe­ri­enced stu­dents,” as will become clear when you watch his video.

Oth­er courses—from yoga video series by Kino Yoga and Yoga Jour­nal—ges­ture to both ends of the pure­ly fit­ness-based and pure­ly spir­i­tu­al-based spec­trum, and both have begin­ner series, above and below. It’s up to you to decide where you stand in the yoga wars, if any­where. You’ll find, if you look, no short­age of reportage, think pieces, aca­d­e­m­ic arti­cles, and rants to fill you in. But if you want to learn the phys­i­cal prac­tice of yoga, you needn’t look far to get start­ed. In addi­tion to the resources here, take a look at some curat­ed lists of online yoga class­es from New York Mag­a­zine, Huff­in­g­ton Post, and Elle UK.  Thanks go to our Twit­ter fol­low­ers, who gave us some help­ful hints. If you have your own tips/favorites, please drop them in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

Stream 18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

Son­ny Rollins Describes How 50 Years of Prac­tic­ing Yoga Made Him a Bet­ter Musi­cian

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Stephen Fry on Coping with Depression: It’s Raining, But the Sun Will Come Out Again

in Health, Psychology | August 10th, 2016

The past three decades have seen an expo­nen­tial growth in the under­stand­ing and treat­ment options for depres­sion, despite the fact that for much of that time, men­tal ill­ness has remained a taboo sub­ject in pop­u­lar dis­course. This was indeed the case, even as almost two-and-a-half mil­lion pre­scrip­tions were writ­ten for Prozac in the U.S. in 1988, the year after its FDA approval. But much has changed since then. For one thing, we’ve seen a full-on back­lash against the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal rev­o­lu­tion in men­tal health treat­ment, lead­ing to the pop­u­lar­i­ty of non-drug treat­ments like cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py and med­i­ta­tion for less severe forms of depres­sion.

We’ve also seen a pop­u­lar­iza­tion of can­did dis­cus­sions about the ill­ness, lead­ing to a spate of clickbait‑y arti­cles like “20 Celebri­ties Who Bat­tled Depres­sion” and seri­ous, seem­ing­ly week­ly fea­tures on social media depres­sion. We can cred­it actor and writer Stephen Fry for a lot of our cur­rent famil­iar­i­ty and com­fort lev­el with the dis­ease.

Ten years ago, Fry “came out” in his BBC doc­u­men­tary The Secret Life of the Man­ic Depres­sive, and since then, he’s open­ly dis­cussed his strug­gle with his ill­ness and his sui­cide attempts. In the videos here, you can see him do just that. At the top, in an inter­view imme­di­ate­ly after the doc­u­men­tary came out, Fry dis­cuss­es the “mor­bid” seri­ous­ness of his dis­ease, which he com­pares to hav­ing “your own per­son­al weath­er.” In deal­ing with it, he says, there are “two mis­takes… to deny that it’s rain­ing… and to say, ‘there­fore my life is over. It’s rain­ing and the sun will nev­er come out.’”

Since mak­ing his diag­no­sis pub­lic, Fry has always sound­ed a note of hope. But his sto­ry, which he tells in more per­son­al detail in the clip fur­ther up, illus­trates the incred­i­ble tra­vails of liv­ing with depres­sion and men­tal ill­ness, even under treat­ment that has brought him sta­bil­i­ty and suc­cess. Like the weath­er, storms come. He revealed his “black stages” in his 2006 doc­u­men­tary. Now, ten years on, Fry has revis­it­ed the strug­gle in a fol­low-up piece, The Not So Secret Life of the Man­ic Depres­sive, in which he opens up about more recent inci­dents, like his sui­cide attempt after inter­view­ing Simon Loko­do, Uganda’s Min­is­ter for Ethics and Integri­ty and spon­sor of the country’s noto­ri­ous “Kill the Gays” bill. (Fry, who is gay, describes Loko­do as a “foam­ing froth­ing homo­phobe of the worst kind.”)

The “mes­sage” of his most recent film, writes The Inde­pen­dent, “was clear across the board: there is no quick fix for men­tal health and no catch-all solu­tion.” As Fry says, “It’s nev­er going to get off my back, this mon­key, it’s always going to be there.” But as he re-iter­ates strong­ly in the Big Think inter­view above, “if the weather’s bad, one day it will get bet­ter.” This can’t hap­pen in a sus­tained way, as it has for Fry, if we per­son­al­ly deny we’re depressed and don’t get help, or if we pub­li­cal­ly deny the dis­ease, and force peo­ple liv­ing with it into a life of shame and need­less suf­fer­ing. “The stig­ma of men­tal ill­ness,” argues clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Michael Fried­man, “is mak­ing us sick­er.” But Fry, who has in the last ten years become the pres­i­dent of a men­tal health non-prof­it called Mind, is opti­mistic. “It’s in the cul­ture more,” he says, “and it’s talked about more.” One hopes we see that talk turned into more action in the com­ing years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry Launch­es Pin­dex, a “Pin­ter­est for Edu­ca­tion”

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Knew When I Was 18

Stephen Fry Hates Danc­ing: Watch Fry’s Rant Against Danc­ing Get Turned into a Won­der­ful Inter­pre­ta­tive Dance

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Book Readers Live Longer Lives, According to New Study from Yale University

in Books, Health | August 4th, 2016

Urval av de böcker som har vunnit Nordiska rådets litteraturpris under de 50 år som priset funnits

Image by Johannes Jans­son, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

What are the keys to longevi­ty? If you ask Dan Buet­tner, the author of The Blue Zones: Lessons for Liv­ing Longer From the Peo­ple Who’ve Lived the Longest, he’d list nine key fac­tors. They range from slow down and don’t stress out, to have a clear pur­pose in life, to eat main­ly plant based foods and put fam­i­ly first. Nowhere on his list, how­ev­er, does he sug­gest sit­ting down and read­ing good books.

And yet a new study by researchers at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty’s School of Pub­lic Health indi­cates that peo­ple who read books (but not so much mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers) live two years longer, on aver­age, than those who don’t read at all. Bec­ca R. Levy, a pro­fes­sor of epi­demi­ol­o­gy at Yale, is quot­ed in The New York Times as say­ing, “Peo­ple who report as lit­tle as a half-hour a day of book read­ing had a sig­nif­i­cant sur­vival advan­tage over those who did not read.” “And the sur­vival advan­tage remained after adjust­ing for wealth, edu­ca­tion, cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty and many oth­er vari­ables.” Pre­cise­ly how book read­ing con­tributes to increased longevi­ty is not spelled out. You can read the abstract for the new study here.

via NYTimes

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Live to Be 100 and Beyond: 9 Diet & Lifestyle Tips

Study Finds That Read­ing Tol­stoy & Oth­er Great Nov­el­ists Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

New Study: Immers­ing Your­self in Art, Music & Nature Might Reduce Inflam­ma­tion & Increase Life Expectan­cy

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Philosopher Sam Harris Leads You Through a 26-Minute Guided Meditation

in Health, Neuroscience, Psychology, Religion | August 2nd, 2016

We’ve post­ed on med­i­ta­tion research late­ly because it’s so com­pelling, and med­i­ta­tion music and instruc­tions because so many cre­ative peo­ple have found it lib­er­at­ing. But it’s always worth not­ing that a few med­i­ta­tion skep­tics have weighed in with point­ed objec­tions to the large claims med­i­ta­tion teach­ers often make. And yet even after one of the most unspar­ing cri­tiques of med­i­ta­tion research and teach­ing, sci­ence writer John Hor­gan still admits that “it might make you feel bet­ter, nicer, wis­er” and plans to con­tin­ue med­i­tat­ing in the face of his “per­fect con­tempt for it.”

Anoth­er pro­fes­sion­al skep­tic has gone even fur­ther along this road. Once spo­ken of as one of the dread­ed “Four Horse­men” of New Athe­ism, Sam Har­ris has also long called him­self a sec­u­lar Bud­dhist, and has writ­ten “a guide to spir­i­tu­al­i­ty with­out reli­gion.”

Wad­ing into the pol­i­tics of med­i­ta­tion means deal­ing with skep­tics like Har­ris who treat Bud­dhism as quaint and archa­ic fool­ish­ness that just hap­pened to pre­serve the sci­en­tif­ic tech­nol­o­gy of mind­ful­ness, and it means sort­ing through a lot of sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies, many of which—as is always the case—have a num­ber fatal flaws in their method. Har­ris’ sci­en­tif­ic claims about mind­ful­ness have come in for their own cri­tiques, from both mys­tics and sec­u­lar­ists.

All of this said, the fact is that, like yoga and many oth­er prac­tices designed to har­mo­nize mind and body, the ben­e­fits of med­i­ta­tion, place­bo-induced or oth­er­wise, are observ­able, and the risks entire­ly neg­li­gi­ble. Many skep­ti­cal researchers have decid­ed to dive in and try med­i­ta­tion before ful­ly cred­it­ing their doubts. And that, sup­pos­ed­ly, is the very instruc­tion we find in what is often called the Bud­dhist “char­ter for free inquiry,” which tells prac­ti­tion­ers to inves­ti­gate for them­selves and take no one’s word for any­thing, a few hun­dred years in advance of the British Roy­al Soci­ety’s mot­to, nul­lius in ver­ba.

In this spir­it, skep­tics like Har­ris have inves­ti­gat­ed med­i­ta­tion and report­ed their find­ings. Many also, like Har­ris and aca­d­e­m­ic researchers like Oxford psy­chi­a­trist Mark Williams, have record­ed their own guid­ed mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tions that cor­re­spond in many respects to the orig­i­nal ancient instruc­tions. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured guid­ed med­i­ta­tions from UCLA and a com­pi­la­tion of record­ed instruc­tions from new agers and sci­en­tists. At the top of the post, you can hear Har­ris’ very straight­for­ward guid­ed med­i­ta­tion, and fur­ther down a short­er ver­sion of the same.

In the video above, Har­ris employs just a lit­tle hyper­bole in com­par­ing mind­ful­ness to the Large Hadron Col­lid­er. His claim that only through this prac­tice can we dis­cov­er “the self is an illu­sion” rings false when we think of the many oth­er philoso­phers who have inde­pen­dent­ly come to the same con­clu­sion, whether as Taoists or Empiri­cists. But Har­ris isn’t only mak­ing the case for mind­ful­ness meditation’s true cor­re­spon­dence to some fun­da­men­tal nature of real­i­ty, but for its prag­mat­ic use­ful­ness in help­ing us move through the world with greater skill and peace of mind—reliable out­comes from reg­u­lar med­i­ta­tion that no one has yet cred­i­bly denied.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lena Dun­ham Shows Why It’s So Damn Hard to Med­i­tate: A Four-Minute Com­e­dy

Allen Gins­berg Teach­es You How to Med­i­tate with a Rock Song Fea­tur­ing Bob Dylan on Bass

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

Stream 18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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