• This article first appeared on The Huffington Post, February 16, 2017. Used with Permission, 2017.

We are at a critical point in our planetary history, and we’re polarized in our views about how to protect both ourselves and our environment. We may all agree that the time is critical, but there is no consensus on what is needed to help—some might say heal—our planet. Many feel the key issue is human safety and the remedy is to protect our species and our resources. These “others”—and I am among them—contend that our sense of separation is what produces both individual and planetary suffering.

* This article first appeared in Awareness Magazine, Nov-Dec Issue, 2016. Used with Permission.

As a young neuroscience professor, I had a spiritual awakening—an inner event that inspired me to spend the last thirty years exploring any understanding that might connect the exceedingly different worlds of science and spirituality.

Angels and miracles are two concepts, I found, that were accepted by spiritualists but never by scientists—and never, I must add, by myself. In religious texts and spiritual magazines, I would read descriptions of angels, the winged messengers or guardians sent by a deity and often the performers of miracles. A miracle, I would like to add, is defined by Webster’s as “an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.”¹

*This article first appeared on The Huffington Post, Science Section, Used with Permission, 2016.

The human brain has amazing capacities. It contains billions of neurons, allowing it to process vast quantities of information so that we can function effectively. But can we have too much information? Yes, and, in fact, filtering information, is one of the brain’s most important functions. Brain filtering is an adaptive strategy and ensures that only the information relevant to our goals is allowed into our consciousness. This keeps us from being flooded with irrelevancies that might distract us.

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*This article first appeared on The Huffington Post, Science Section. Used with Permission, 2016

In recent years, hypnosis has become an accepted medical therapy to address a variety of conditions, including childbirth pain and weight loss, which are concerns for many women. This increased popularity is probably due to research that shows hypnosis can produce profound improvements in health—though we know very little about the mechanisms by which these improvements are made. The word hypnosis comes from ancient Greek and means “a mental state like sleep” -but as a therapy, it isn’t so easily defined. Though hypnosis produces changes in the body, it appears as if these physiological changes occur through our own mental processes.