mental health – Tory Shulman

10 Dec 2012

The Secret-Sauce to Survival

Tory Shulman News adapting, Buddhism, buddhist, depressed, depression, healing, inspiration, lost, meditation, mental health, metaphors, pema chodron, sadness, survival, zen

As most of you know, I'm not a the adventuresome sort. In fact, I am a bit of a homebody. Or as my friends and family sometimes call me--a sad, sad, reclusive hermit. However, I do enjoy the idea of adventure and I find myself absorbing any kind of extreme survival stories, books, TV shows or documentaries I can get my hands on. My latest read was a terrific book called "Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies and Why" by Laurence Gonzalez. I highly recommend it. Gonzalez takes you through a myriad of AMAZING survival stories and explains why certain people live and certain people die. Turns out, it has nothing to do with age or gender or…

11 Things To Do When You’re Sick Of Feeling Heartbroken

Buddhism, Reality Television, Relationships Buddhism, heartbroken, love, mental health, pema chodron, relationships

1) Get deep into a dramatic TV series on DVD. I’m talking The Wire, Dexter, Homicide etc. You need to have intense characters to bond with and twisting plots to gasp at. Pick something with three seasons or longer depending on how lonely you are. 2) Crosswords. They are time consuming and you look smart doing them at Starbucks. Extra points if you subscribe to a newspaper to get your crosswords since this gives you a little something to look forward to every morning. 3) Knitting. I know. Nerd Alert. But the skill is very easy to pick up and it is very meditative. The accomplishment of creating something, even a knotted scarf will give you a boost of self…

You have exactly 90 seconds

Tory Shulman News brain, Buddhism, meditation, mental health, pema chodron, science

“I define responsibility as the ability to choose how we respond to stimulation…Although there are certain limbic system programs that can be triggered automatically, it takes less than 90 SECONDS for one of these programs to be triggered, surge through our body, and then be completely flushed out of our blood stream…If, however, I remain angry after those 90 seconds have passed then it is because I have chosen to let that circuit continue to run.” —-“My Stroke of Insight” by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. If you didn’t know, Dr. Jill Taylor is a one of the top brain anatomists in the country. In 1996 she famously suffered a severe stroke at the young age of 37 leaving her temporarily,…