Improving Your Sleep

One of the greatest complaints physicians hear is that patients have poor quality sleep. This either comes in the form of insomnia, or feeling tired after a full night's rest. 

The Mandala

Mandalas are very ancient meditative designs and are international in their distribution. Their design is often circular, ornate and flowing within, to the centre and then to the outside of the boundary. Labyrinths are similar designs. The object is for meditation and to create harmony and balance within the mind. Anyone can produce their own mandalas and colour them as desired. They are especially good for children and for recuperation from mental and physical illness. 

Carl Jung - spirituality

Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist who trained under Eugene Bleuler and was associated and trained with Sigmund Freud. Jung’s school of Analytic Psychology continues to be popular. He is accused of collaborating with the Nazis in WWII where he acted as a psychiatrist and promoted Hitler and Mein Kampf. Despite having a reputation for endorsing astrology, after an initial belief, he rejected it. 

Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology.  He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar's gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart throught the world.  There in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with a real knowledge of the human soul. -- Carl Jung (from "New Paths in Psychology", in Collected Papers on Analytic Psychology, London, 1916). 

Notes - Socrates - Karen Armstrong

Precis notes from The Case for God by Karen Armstrong

"An unexamined life is not worth living!" Socrates. 

Socrates did not commit any of his teachings to writing, so we rely on the writings of his pupil Plato (circa 427 - 347). Socrates preferred oral teaching when matters could be discussed and points challenged. He did not like fixed or stridently held opinions. 

Socrates sought not only to inform but also to create in the minds of his students a profound psychological change. Wisdom was an insight not an amassing information. He said he had no interest in teaching people anything because he knew nothing. His students did not come to learn anything but to have an experience and a radical change of mind. His dialogues were a spiritual exercise. Socrates was primarily interested in goodness which, like Confucius, he refused to define. 

Instead of analysing and talking about virtue, he wanted to live a virtuous life! When asked for a definition of justice, he replied “instead of speaking it make it an act of life”. This was only possible because Socrates was authentic and his mission was to awaken genuine self knowledge. Those who came to talk to him were involved in a dialectic of rigourous discipline designed to expose false beliefs,  consequently a conversation with Socrates could be disturbing. He forced students to submit to answering questions concerning their present manner of life and the life they have lived, and he would only discuss subjects that they felt comfortable with. 

Arthur Janov

Who was Arthur Janov? 

Arthur Janov was a Californian psychotherapist who developed the theory of Primal Therapy. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were clients. Primal Therapy involved screaming, crying and expressing early abuse. 

Self Actualisation Qualities

 According to Maslow, self-actualizing people share the following qualities:

• Truth: honest, reality, beauty, pure, clean and unadulterated completeness
• Goodness: rightness, desirability, uprightness, benevolence, honesty
• Beauty: rightness, form, aliveness, simplicity, richness, wholeness, perfection, completion,
• Wholeness: unity, integration, tendency to oneness, interconnectedness, simplicity, organization, structure, order, not dissociated, synergy
• Dichotomy: transcendence, acceptance, resolution, integration, polarities, opposites, contradictions
• Aliveness: process, not-deadness, spontaneity, self-regulation, full-functioning
• Uniqueness: idiosyncrasy, individuality, non comparability, novelty
• Perfection: nothing superfluous, nothing lacking, everything in its right place, just-rightness, suitability, justice
• Necessity: inevitability: it must be just that way, not changed in any slightest way
• Completion: ending, justice, fulfillment
• Justice: fairness, suitability, disinterestedness, non partiality,
• Order: lawfulness, rightness, perfectly arranged
• Simplicity: abstract, essential skeletal, bluntness
• Richness: differentiation, complexity, intricacy, totality
• Effortlessness: ease; lack of strain, striving, or difficulty
• Playfulness: fun, joy, amusement
• Self-sufficiency: autonomy, independence, self-determining.

Sociopath!

What is a Sociopath? 
We have all heard this word, but many of us do not know its meaning! 
A sociopath is someone who has the hallmarks of extreme selfishness, lack of empathy and lack of conscience. Sometimes the word is used interchangeably with the word 'psychopath' and the words 'antisocial personality disorder' is also often used by professionals. They appear in all walks of life; doctors, lawyers, accountants, politicians, etc., etc., and are manipulative, impulsive, unkind and mean, they have a sense of superiority and entitlement, are judgemental and often bully others into submission. They are also narcissistic and think or speak about themselves in exagerated terms. It is thought that 3 - % of the population have this defect in their character. There is no suitable medication to treat it. Anger management can help.

Stalking - A Malicious Hate Crime

Stalking is a crime of aggression that leaves no visible scars. Yet the effects of stalking are severely debilitating on emotional, mental and spiritual levels as they leave the victim feeling increasingly powerless and traumatised. The crime is one of veiled threats, harassment, intimidation, control, intrusion and emotional blackmail and it often occurs over a prolonged period, resulting in accumulated confusion, isolation, alienation, and eventually crisis for the victim. 

Stalking may involve information gathering, importuning, parading a new victim, malicious remarks or behaviour, and upsetting remarks or language. The Readers Digest Universal Dictionary defines stalking as “to move threateningly, to pursue or track stealthily, to transverse threateningly or menacingly.” These definitions provide an example of the type of predatory prowling that perpetrators have towards their prey. 

How To Breathe!

Why do singing lessons need to discuss the way to breathe properly? Isn't breathing just part of being alive and something that we do all the time without even thinking about it. While we all breathe, not everyone breathes properly, and one of the secrets to singing success is being able to breathe properly.

Proper breathing is one of the key aspects to learning to sing. Breathing correctly affects the quality of your voice tone and also helps you sing long notes when you need to. One of the most common mistakes made by people when they first sign up for singing lessons is that they think that breathing for singing is the same as breathing for, say, aerobics or regular activity.

Mind Mapping Demonstration

Designed by the late Tony Buzan in the 1970s, this is a very useful way of collating psychological material. This video demonstrates how to create a 'mind map'. I use them all the time as a writer to organise the information for my feature articles. The most simple form is a spidergram, which has been available since my childhood days.