Unlocking One's Pleasure Centers

JAMIE WHEAL: How many of us are just suffering micro-PTSD all day, every day, that is just accumulating from the stuck in traffic or the held on customer support, or the family squabbles, or the social media flame wars, social injustice, or relentless news feeds of people suffering around the world. The sheer grind of it, the repetitiveness of it, and the questionable point. If we're only stuck down in the world, then the mundane will crush us. 

We need tools to mend our trauma, tools to reconnect with inspiration, why we're here and what it all means, and tools to better connect with each other. Well, how would we do that? Start with our own bodies and brains. On the one hand, it seems very low-tech, and on the other hand, leads us right to the doorstep of some of the most potent, controversial, taboo-laden, and powerful psycho technologies that humans have ever assembled.

I'm Jamie Wheal, Founder of the Flow Genome Project and author of "Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex, and Death in a World That's Lost Its Mind".

The collapse in meaning that I think you can at least argue we're in the midst of right now is complex and multivariable. Things are likely to get harder before they get better. Give me some sense that there is something more in this mortal coil beyond life's a bitch and then I die. If you want to do things that everybody has access to that are effective and zero to low-cost, start with our own bodies and brains, because our own bodies and brains shape our ability to access inspiration, healing, and connection, like breathing. 

We are all strongly, strongly, strongly encoded to breathe. In our nervous systems, there is all sorts of reinforcement of respiratory rate, rhythm depth, and it has a profound impact on our consciousness. We can alleviate stress. We can affect depression. We can even remove or lessen PTSD all just by teaching people how to breathe better. That's amazing. So respiration is one example.  READ MORE...