I woke up this morning feeling like crap. I didn’t get enough sleep. It wasn’t because I had sick kids, a work deadline, or even insomnia. My fatigue was self-inflicted. I had stayed up too late watching television. “Urgh,” I thought, as I wrangled my two kids through their breakfast. “There’s no way I’m getting through today uncaffeinated.”The crazy thing is that I fully intended to go to bed early last night. In fact, I was in bed by 9:00pm. But I recently learned that a certain online streaming service is available on my phone and when the one episode... Read full article »

If you had told me 110 days ago that I would not only start wanting to meditate for 45 minutes a day, but that I would sometimes want to meditate for even longer periods of time, I would have said you’re bloody joking. Back then I knew enough about meditation to know that the practice is far from being all “glowing balls of light’ and like “a warm bath for your mind,” as it’s often described. Pretty much anyone who has tried mindfulness meditation (where you attempt to continually bring your distracted mind back to a point of focus) will... Read full article »

If you had bumped into me at the mall this morning you might have thought I’d gone crazy. My regular readers will know that I’m a health journalist with an autoimmune disease and that, among other things, I prioritise eating well. Indeed, I regularly write about my struggles with healthy eating in this mad world which seems set against me. So upon seeing me at the mall with a shopping bag full of sweets and treats, it would have been easy to assume that I’d fallen off the wagon. But in fact my candy-buying-binge was all in the name of... Read full article »

At 8:30 next Monday morning I’ll be lying in an MRI machine having my brain scanned again. I’m feeling nervous about it. Not because I have a fear of enclosed spaces and not because I’m worried about what the experts might find. I’m worried about what the experts might not find. That is, I’m worried that my brain will be exactly the same as it was 93 days ago before I began meditating daily.This is part of a new documentary I’m making about meditation. In recent months I’ve been traveling around the globe, meeting scientists, monks, meditation teachers, and people... Read full article »

This is a conversation I heard between New Jersey bus driver and an elderly Chinese passenger on a bus bound for New York City.Driver: “Hey, how you doing? Last time I saw you, you were headed to Old Bridge. Where you going today?”Passenger: “Oh there’s a guy I’ve got to see in Freehold. How have you been?”Driver: “Not so good. I’ve got the diabetes”Passenger: “Oh, that’s not so good.”Driver: “Yeah, and now I’m trying to eat right, but I’m so confused. I don’t know what to eat. Like I thought I could get some of that sugar free gum, but... Read full article »

Are you thinking about taking an 8-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course? Would you be willing to be filmed throughout? About the filmFrom the producers of the internationally acclaimed feature film The Connection, comes an exciting new documentary about meditation.The documentary follows the story of time-poor, overburdened, health journalist Shannon Harvey as she meditates daily for a year. Shannon is a lapsed-meditator, who suffers from insomnia and an autoimmune disease, which causes arthritis and chronic pain. A team of scientists will measure everything from her stress levels, to her immune function and brain changes, right down to her DNA in... Read full article »