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maandag 26 maart 2007 |
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Do you limit your Self? We are used to let others decide what is right and wrong for us; parents, our partner, our teachers, the media, the government and many others. Why don’t go inside your mind and ask your Self, ask you Higher Self and you will get the answer, sometimes the answer comes when you expect it the least. Many people approach structuring water with a limited understanding of its potential, and use it in a limited way - and therefore limit the benefits they can achieve from using it. I'd like to encourage you to expand your impression of the freedom you can achieve using this wonderful technique. Many people approach structuring water with a limited understanding of its potential, and use it in a limited way - and therefore limit the benefits they can achieve from using it. I'd like to encourage you to expand your vision of the freedom you can achieve using this wonderful technique.
Posted: 6:07:46 PM
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Can You Live With the Voices in Your Head? Angelo, a London-born scientist in his early 30s with sandy brown hair, round wire-frame glasses and a slight, unobtrusive stammer, vividly recalls the day he began to hear voices. It was Jan. 7, 2001, and he had recently passed his Ph.D. oral exams in chemistry at an American university, where, for the previous four and a half years, he conducted research into infrared electromagnetism. Angelo was walking home from the laboratory when, all of a sudden, he heard two voices in his head. “It was like hearing thoughts in my mind that were not mine,” he explained recently. “They identified themselves as Andrew and Oliver, two angels. In my mind’s eye, I could see an image of a bald, middle-aged man dressed in white against a white background. This, I was told, was Oliver.” What the angels said, to Angelo’s horror, was that in the coming days, he would die of a brain hemorrhage. Terrified, Angelo hurried home and locked himself into his apartment. For three long days he waited out his fate, at which time his supervisor drove him to a local hospital, where Angelo was admitted to the psychiatric ward. It was his first time under psychiatric care. He had never heard voices before. His diagnosis was schizophrenia with depressive overtones. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Photomontage by Suellen Parker Angelo remembers his time at the hospital as the deepening of a nightmare. On top of his natural confusion and fear over the shattering of his psychological stability, Angelo did not react well to the antipsychotic he’d been prescribed, risperidone, which is meant to alleviate the symptoms of schizophrenia by reducing the level of dopamine in the brain. In Angelo’s case, the pills had a predominantly negative effect. His voices remained strong and disturbing — an unshakable presence, quiet only in sleep — while he grew sluggish and enervated. “If you think of the mind as a flowing river of thoughts,” he told me in an e-mail message, “the drug made my mind feel like a slow-moving river of treacle.” Several days into his stay, Angelo’s parents flew to the United States from London and took him back home. More than six years later, Angelo still lives at his parents’ house. He currently takes a cocktail of antidepressants and antipsychotics, with tolerable side effects, and sees a psychologist every two months to monitor his medication. The pills help Angelo to manage his voices, but they have not been able to eradicate them. Shortly after his return to London, he made an attempt to resume his career, accepting a research position at the university where he had received his undergraduate degree. He lasted eight months (his neighbors heard him screaming at his voices and called the police), checked himself into the hospital for six weeks and returned home. Despite these setbacks, Angelo has maintained his optimism. He is eager to discover new ways to combat his voices. Not long ago, he found one. In November, his psychologist informed him of a local support group for people who hear voices, from which he thought Angelo might benefit. Angelo began to attend the group late last year. I first met Angelo at a meeting of the group in mid-January. (I was given permission to sit in on the condition that I not divulge the participants’ last names.) The meeting took place in the bright, cheerfully decorated back room of a community mental-health center in North Finchley, an affluent, grassy suburb in the northern reaches of London. The gathering was small but eclectic. In addition to the group’s facilitators — Jo Kutchinsky, an occupational therapist, and Liana Kaiser, a social-work student — five men and women assembled in a circle of bulky wool-knit chairs around a worn coffee table. Besides Angelo, there was Stewart, a young, working-class Londoner with a shaved head and a hoop earring; Jenny, an affable woman in her 50s who spoke of her fondness for arts and crafts; Michelle, a heavyset woman who dominated the session with her forceful opinions; and David, a 60-something man with a thick gray beard and a pageboy haircut who slumped in his seat and dozed throughout much of the meeting. Angelo was the newest member of this group — it was his third visit — and he did not seem inclined to participate fully. When Kutchinsky opened the meeting by asking each member to discuss the previous week’s experience hearing voices, he softly mentioned that his voices made it difficult to read, then quickly ceded the floor. What followed was sometimes painful. Stewart in particular was visibly agitated. His hallucinatory life, as he described it, was chaotic and irrepressible. He heard voices pleading to him for help; he heard the voices of strangers; he heard the voice of his father. Sometimes he heard the voices of military commandos, who offered to defend him against this confusion. 'I haven’t been well for a long time,' he said glumly. Yet most of the members spoke of their voices in the way that comedians speak of mothers-in-law: burdensome and irritating, but an inescapable part of life that you might as well learn to deal with. When David’s name was called, he lifted his head and discussed his struggle to accept his voices as part of his consciousness. 'I’ve learned over time that my voices can’t be rejected,' he said. 'No matter what I do, they won’t go away. I have to find a way to live with them.' Jenny discussed how keeping busy quieted her voices; she seemed to have taken a remarkable number of adult-education courses. Michelle expressed her belief that her voices were nothing more exotic than powerfully negative thoughts. 'Negative thoughts are universal,' she said. 'Everyone has them. Everyone. What matters is how you cope with them: that’s what counts.'
Posted: 1:05:30 PM
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Dr Quantum - Flatland
From the movie 'What the Bleep do we Know', a Must See!!
Posted: 12:19:33 AM
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