For the first time in over 15 years, Cathy Hutchinson brought a coffee to her lips and smiled. Cathy had suffered from the paralysing effects of a stroke, but when neurosurgeons implanted tiny recording devices in her brain, she could use her thought patterns to guide a robot arm that delivered her hot drink. This week, it was reported that Jan Scheuermann, who is paralysed from the neck down, could grasp and move a variety of objects by controlling a robotic arm with her mind.

In both cases the implants convert brain signals into digital commands that a robotic device can follow. It’s a remarkable achievement, one that could transform the lives of people debilitated through illness.

Yet it’s still a far cry from the visions of man fused with machine, or cyborgs, that grace computer games or sci-fi. The dream is to create the type of brain augmentations we see in fiction that provide cyborgs with advantages or superhuman powers. But the ones being made in the lab only aim to restore lost functionality – whether it’s brain implants that restore limb control, or cochlear implants for hearing…

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As I write this, our thoughts are with those in Boston who were affected by the bombings at the 2013 Boston Marathon.

In my 20 years living in the Boston area, I cheered on the runners on many occasions and now, even from far way, these events feel close to home.

Experiencing trauma can have a dramatic effect on our bodies and our minds. And although it’s a different experience to witness a trauma on television, it still can affect us.

When you perceive a threat, the body activates the stress response. The stress response occurs in both your body and brain.

The body’s response to acute stress is a preparation for emergency. Adrenaline and other hormones are released. The body shuts down processes associated with long-term care. When under immediate threat, digestion, reproduction, cell repair and other body tasks related to long-term functioning are unimportant.

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Hundreds of participants of all age groups have attended public workshops in addition to regular training sessions  in Universities and Institutions worldwide.

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What is it all about ?

 Life is supposed to be getting easier ; well, at least that’s what they say. So why do so many of us run around with frowns on our faces ? Ask anybody what’s bothering them and pretty soon you’ll find out that everyone is completely “ stressed out”. Everybody is putting in tremendous efforts to get somewhere in life, while inside ulcers, coronary diseases and high blood pressure ravage their system. In this era of mass communication you find more broken down relationships and poor psychological bonds in any sphere of life. What is it that has gone wrong ?

The outer show will not change the Inner Core:

The problem lies within us: within individuals who haven’t grappled with internal conflicts, which manifest externally. Many of us operate on a superficial level, which is known as sensory level activity, or sometimes even at an intellectual level. What we fail to realize is that we need to reach beyond these levels to what is known as the integral level, at which point a person’s consciousness can be restructured. With the right approach this could very well be the start of a journey towards the complete transformation of the personality of the individual.

 Rationale

 To compete in today’s global markets your organisation needs to develop and support 21^st century leadership, ethics and values. The Programmes will give you and your organisation the extra edge to compete in these turbulent times.  These are Holistic Diagnostic Programmes for organisations and individuals. The Holistic approach looks at the latest research in Brain Re-engineering , the psychological, physical, family, spiritual, commercial and social factors that influence an organisation and an individual.

These Programmes look at how to transcend from IQ (Intelligence Quotient) to EQ (Emotional Quotient) and ultimately to SQ (Spiritual Quotient). The Programmes also demonstrates how to use NLP tools to enhance IQ, EQ and SQ both from an Organisational perspective and an individual perspective.

The purpose of the transformational  Programmes is to provide an enriching experience for executives and those in positions of leadership and prepare them for leadership challenges of the 21^st Century.

The participants who attend  workshops will learn how they think at present and how they could improve their thinking styles, develop confidence, principles of a winning mind,   mind mapping, creativity, stress control , removal of negative traits that block full potential, and transformational principles.

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Sin Vs Suffering comparing Karl Bath’s Dogmatics with Vissudhimaga

A usual observation is that comparison is the fundamental way to gain understanding of anything. Succinctly, all knowledge is comparative. This dissertation illustrates, in an intentional and explicit way, this observation with the claim that comparative inquiry evinces insights and truths that non-comparative inquiry does not. The difficulty of this claim is twofold: first, it would be difficult, if possible, to study something non-comparatively with the purpose of showing what is not learned in the process. Thus there is no counterpoint against which to contrast the knowledge gained from this comparative study….

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Neuro-Physiological correlates of Altered states of Consciousness

One of the central problems unconsciousness research is the lack of a taxonomy of consciousness. Freud’s two part division of consciousness into a) the conscious and b) the subconscious, besides its well-noted verbal confusion (viz., how could something subconscious ever be said to be conscious), is simply not an adequate conceptual device for handling all the various varieties of conscious states. Maslow’s two part division into..

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Spe Salvi Facti Sumus- Pope Benedict’s encyclical on hope

In the encyclical about hope running into about 75 pages, Pope Benedict is not proposing afacile hope in heaven undoing injustices of life on earth. Indeed, this is where he brings inDostoyevsky. The Pope asserts that “the last Judgment is not primarily an image of terror, butan image of hope”. A world without God is a world without hope, and “God is justice”. OnlyGod can provide the justice that sustains hope in the better future—the eternal life—for oneand all. “God is justice and creates justice. This is our consolation and our hope. And in his justice there is also grace. This we know by turning our gaze to the crucified and risen Christ.Both these things—justice and grace—must be seen in their correct inner relationship..

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Job Descriptions Manual for practitioners

An accurate job description, composed with clarify and brevity and based on the careful analysis of the tasks performed, is essential not only for the staffing process but for job evaluation and the full range of Human Resources functions. Without job description as a guideline, interviewing job candidates would be difficult, selecting the right person would be a gamble. Performance appraisals would be more guess work, evaluations for  promotions would be subject to personal rather than professional considerations, selecting for training would be haphazard, and comparison structure might be invalid. Having a set of job descriptions doe s notautomatically solve all personnel problems. But considering how valuable and useful they are, it is surprising that many companies avoid them or are content to use that are too vague or too good to be meaningful….

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Eucharistic Consciousness

The Holy Eucharist is the oldest experience of Christian Worship as well as the most distinctive. Eucharist comes from the Greek word which means thanksgiving. In a particular sense, the word describes the most important form of the Church’s attitude toward all of life. The origin of the Eucharist is traced to the Last Supper at which Christ instructed His disciples to offer bread and wine in His memory. The Eucharist is the most distinctive event of Orthodox worship because in it the Church gathers to remember and celebrate the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ and, thereby, to participate in the mystery of Salvation.

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In this age of advanced modern medicine, it is a depressing fact that not all people suffering with a depressive illness respond to antidepressants.

The mental health charity Mind UK recently highlighted their concern that there is a serious need for a range of therapies to be made available to depression sufferers.

According to the best psychological working practices, medication is now considered to be only one option for effectively treating the illness.

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EFFECTS OF STRESS

Weak executive functioning

Tendency towards

• Rigid thinking
• Impulsive, reactive behavior
• Shortsighted decision-making
• Poor working memory
• Distracted attention
• Drug and alcohol abuse
• Unethical thinking and behavior

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An experiment suggests doodling may be more than just a pleasant waste of time and paper.

All sorts of claims have been made for the power of doodling: from it being an entertaining or relaxing activity, right through to it aiding creativity, or even that you can read people’s personalities in their doodles.

The idea that doodling provides a window to the soul is probably wrong. It can seem intuitively attractive but it falls into the same category as graphology: it’s a pseudoscience (psychologists have found no connection between personality and handwriting).

Although it’s probably a waste of time trying to interpret a doodle, could the act of doodling itself still be a beneficial habit for attention and memory in certain circumstances?

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Many of us set resolutions that we think we should. We should lose weight. We should diet. We should make more money. We should have a super clean, clutter-free home. We should strive for wanting less — or wanting more.

So it’s understandable why most resolutions stay unresolved. But by shifting how you view, and act, on resolutions and act on them, you can set goals that genuinely nourish you and contribute value to your life.

Below, two experts share eight suggestions for setting authentic and achievable resolutions.

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In staying away from drugs and alcohol there are often specific external triggers that can be avoided. This is a way to keep the addict’s mind from facing the choice to give in to the urge.

But in sex addiction there are not only external triggers, driving through the strip club neighborhood, browsing on the internet, etc. but there are powerful internal triggers as well.

Internal emotional states can lead to sexual thoughts, urges and fantasies even without any external “drug” or drug related stimulus being present.

Satisfying the sexual craving may or may not involve another person or stimulus from outside. Both the stimulus and the rewarding substance can be contained within the addict’s brain.

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Fear can occur in any number of situations. It can be both effective — for instance, when it compels us to run from a burning building — and a blockade that can keep us from living our lives fully.

In a recent article in GQ Magazine, behavioral neuroscientist Mona Lisa Shultz, PhD, describes illogical fear — that is fear of things that are not a threat to our lives or well-being — as a “corrupted file that you downloaded by accident that keeps coming up.”

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