PCDR stands for Placebo Controlled Dose Reduction. It is where a drug is gradually replaced by a placebo by making incremental reductions in the drug while making incremental increases in the placebo. One of the most successful demonstrations was by Fabrizio Benedetti at the University of Turin School of Medicine. Over the period of 5 […]
positivity
Trust that what happens is for the best
I broke my wee toe about three weeks ago. I have such a dangerous job – I was preparing to give a talk, walking around my office speaking aloud as I refined how I was going to describe one particular topic, and I hit my toe on the radiator. I’ve been surprised since then just […]
How searching for my lost suitcase led me to kindness
I left my suitcase on a train recently. Believe it or not, I was meditating as the train approached the station. The only thing I wasn’t mindful of was that my case was on the rack above me. 🙂 I only realised this when I arrived at my hotel about half an hour later. I […]
Acceptance vs Assertion
I’ve been thinking a bit recently about finding the balance between accepting things as they are and going with the flow and asserting your will or pushing for what you want. There’s a balance. There’s a time and a place for both, but the more I accept and go with the flow, the more things […]
Visualising Illness into Wellness
For several years now, I have been writing about, and teaching, a visualisation strategy of imagining illness turning into wellness. People often ask me how it works. I believe there’s a few things that contribute so I thought I’d briefly sketch out some of them in this blog. 1) Impact on the immune system There’s […]
The art of self-correction
Several years ago, I spent time as an athletics coach, coaching young people in the long jump and triple jump. It was one of these things that just kind of happened. I had no previous coaching experience, and certainly wasn’t a technical expert in the logistics of jumping, but the existing coach was moving on […]
A matter of perspective
I’ve always thought of myself as having a positive attitude. Not all the time, of course. I think we all have our good and bad days, the latter making positive thinking quite a bit harder, those days when if someone says ‘Think positive’, well, I’ll leave it to your imagination. But in many instances, whether […]
Can your mind influence your genes?
Yes! It’s doing it 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It’s impossible, actually, to disentangle your mind from your genes. When you learn something new, or think the same thing over and over again, the brain lays down neural pathways. But they don’t just spring out of thin air. They are the consequence […]
Kindness Dominos
I did an online interview with CNN recently that was all about kindness. One of the questions they asked me was about the ripple effect of kindness and what that means for us. Since I was very young I’ve had a strong belief that a small group of people with compassion and kindness in their […]
5 Ways that Positivity and Happiness can Protect you from Illness and even help you Live Longer
Stress can have many causes but one that applies to many of us is in how we look at and deal with life situations. Positive coping strategies help keep stress low but having a negative outlook or expectation about things can cause us no end of stress. Given that stress is linked with illness, it […]