Medicine Philosophy

The modern lifestyle with its excesses and worldly desires, the constant need to be connected, and the rapid development in technology, has made stress and lifestyle-related diseases the norm. The need for meditation, thus, is more acute. Meditation calms the mind, brings focus and enhances the senses, resulting in a better quality of life and work. And with the right Mantras, meditation becomes a highly effective tool in unleashing the immense potential within oneself.

Early studies of the human brain used a simple method: Wait for misfortune to strike - strokes, seizures, infectious diseases, horrendous accidents - and see how victims coped. In many cases their survival was miraculous, if puzzling. Observers were amazed by the transformations that took place when different parts of the brain were destroyed, altering victims' personalities. With the lucid, masterful explanations and razor-sharp wit his fans have come to expect, Kean explores the brain's secret passageways.

The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the 20th century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, MD, who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman's documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius.

In the late 1990s, shortly after arriving in the United States, it became clear to Dza Kilung Rinpoche that his Western students were unable to progress in meditation, as well as his students had back in Asia - and he realized that was because the pace of Western life made it difficult for them to relax. The Relaxed Mind contains instructions for the seven-phase meditation practice Dza Kilung Rinpoche developed for Westerners. It's very traditional but adapted to help those of us who live in a culture of distraction.

In 1920, at the end of the last major pandemic, global life expectancy was just over 40 years. Today, in many parts of the world, human beings can expect to live more than 80 years. As a species, we have doubled our life expectancy in just one century. There are few measures of human progress more astonishing than this increased longevity.

Featuring accounts by practitioners living everyday lives, this introduction to Vipassana meditation provides a way for listeners to learn more about its benefits. Explained is what takes place before, during, and after a 10-day silent meditation retreat. Each participant follows the same discipline: silence, a basic moral code known as the five precepts, a prescribed timetable, a vegetarian diet, and a commitment to practicing only what is taught at the retreat.

At the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Joshua Mezrich creates life from loss, transplanting organs from one body to another. In this intimate, profoundly moving work, he illuminates the extraordinary field of transplantation that enables this kind of miracle to happen every day.

Ignác Semmelweis is remembered for the now-commonplace notion that doctors must wash their hands before examining patients. In mid-19th century Vienna, however, this was a subversive idea. With deaths from childbed fever exploding, Semmelweis discovered that doctors themselves were spreading the disease. While his simple reforms worked immediately - childbed fever in Vienna all but disappeared - they brought down upon Semmelweis the wrath of the establishment, and led to his tragic end.

Author and philosopher Sydney Banks once again brings to life his wise and simple gardener as a voice through which Banks presents more implications of the Three Principles that create human reality, calling on us to realize that to fully understand the Principles is to liberate one's spirit. In this sequel to Sydney Banks’ book The Enlightened Gardener, two colleagues return to England to meet once again with the remarkable gardener whose simple yet profound philosophy made such a difference to their lives.

Most stories of medical progress come with ready-made heroes. John Snow traced the origins of London's 1854 cholera outbreak to a water pump, leading to the birth of epidemiology. Florence Nightingale's contributions to the care of soldiers in the Crimean War transformed hospitals from crucibles of infection to sanctuaries of recuperation. Yet histories of individual innovators ignore many key sources of medical knowledge.

No religion or spiritual movement is more known for its association with meditation than Buddhism. Yet, in the Western world there has been very little comprehensive instruction available on this integral practice in book form - until now. In How to Meditate Like a Buddhist, best-selling author and certified meditation instructor Cynthia Kane demystifies this ancient practice and gently teaches you everything you need to know about building a meditation practice that works for you, including detailed guidance on posture, breathing, mindset, overcoming common obstacles, and more.

Blood carries life, yet the sight of it makes people faint. It is a waste product and a commodity pricier than oil. It can save lives and transmit deadly infections. Each one of us has roughly nine pints of it, yet many don’t even know their own blood type. And for all its ubiquitousness, the few tablespoons of blood discharged by 800 million women are still regarded as taboo: menstruation is perhaps the single most demonized biological event.

The Mindfulness of Breathing meditation has been practised in the Buddhist tradition for 2,500 years. It is now widely used not just among Buddhists but increasingly in the secular world as the basis of mindfulness training, and in other contexts such as yoga and, in recent times, stress and pain management. After all, as the author and teacher Vessantara observes: ‘The breath is always with us, necessary to our very existence, though it is often goes unnoticed. Yet giving it attention can transform our lives.' In The Breath, Vessantara, who has been meditating on the breath for over 40 years, writes engagingly for both newcomers and those with some experience.

At the height of World War I, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease.

Empower yourself through living in the present moment and letting go with mindfulness. In this audiobook, you will find out how to take charge of your life and make the decision to live the way you would like. By choosing to live a life with more meaning, one that makes you better connected, you are off to a great start toward the mindfulness that you seek. The peace you will gain while learning to live a life of mindfulness is priceless.

Is stress a deadly disease on the rise in modern society? Can mind-body practices from the East help us become well? When it comes to healing, we believe we must look beyond doctors and drugs; we must look within ourselves. Faith, relationships, and attitude matter. But why do we believe such things? From psychoanalysis to the placebo effect to meditation, this vibrant cultural history describes mind-body healing as rooted in a patchwork of stories, allowing us to make new sense of our suffering and to rationalize new treatments and lifestyles.

This sweeping exploration of the impact of epidemic diseases looks at how mass infectious outbreaks have shaped society, from the Black Death to today, and in a new preface addresses the global threat of COVID-19. In a clear and accessible style, Frank M. Snowden reveals the ways that diseases have not only influenced medical science and public health, but also transformed the arts, religion, intellectual history, and warfare.

No matter where we are in our spiritual development, we all have questions about our practice and what we are experiencing - both the challenges and opportunities. How can I overcome my struggles to meditate more deeply? Is there a need for a guru, or can I rely on myself? Can I trust my intuition? Is it possible to hear the “Inner Word”, the voice of the soul, and how can I be sure that’s what I’m hearing? Is the Higher Self in the heart?

In 1953, a 27-year-old factory worker named Henry Molaison - who suffered from severe epilepsy - received a radical new version of the then-common lobotomy, targeting the most mysterious structures in the brain. The operation failed to eliminate Henry’s seizures, but it did have an unintended effect: Henry was left profoundly amnesic, unable to create long-term memories. Over the next 60 years, Patient H.M., as Henry was known, became the most studied individual in the history of neuroscience, a human guinea pig who would teach us much of what we know about memory today.

Una guía intuitiva hacia una de las tres religiones mayoritarias del mundo y hacia la sabiduría que hay detrás de su filosofía y sus enseñanzas. Esta es la guía ideal para cualquiera que esté buscando ampliar su comprensión de esta extraordinaria religión y la forma en que sus enseñanzas pueden transformar la forma en que vivimos.