Sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
-Thomas Dekker (British dramatist)

To sleep is the most natural thing. So why can it be so elusive?

In a CDC study more than a third of Americans reported that they regularly don’t get enough sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation, 45 percent of Americans report that poor or insufficient sleep affected their activities at least once in the past seven days.

Sleep is a basic human need—just like need to eat food and drink water. The loss of sleep can be painful and disorienting. Perhaps this is why sleep deprivation has been used as a tactic in “enhanced interrogations.”

If you’ve had a poor night or two of sleep, you may have noticed that it’s harder to pay attention in class, carry on conversations and deal with minor frustrations. You may also be more susceptible to colds and flus. You may become impatient and short-tempered with your loved ones and your…

A recent study at the University of Iowa invited students to practice loving kindness for twelve minutes. Students were told to walk around a campus building and wish that anyone they encounter be happy and really mean it.

The students who practiced this brief loving-kindness activity reported lower anxiety, greater happiness, empathy and interconnectedness than control subjects. Moreover, these positive effects occurred regardless of such traits as overall stress, narcissism, and general contentment.

We often imagine that pursuing our own happiness is what will make us the most happy. There is some truth in that. If we ignore what makes us happy or have never figured this out, this can lead us to neglect our own well-being and mechanically pursue relationships and activities that leave us feeling dispirited and finding little joy in our lives.

On the other hand, pursuing our own happiness without regard to the well-being of others can lead to…

In Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim finds himself experiencing time out of sequence. One moment he is being taken by German soldiers as a prisoner of war; the next he is in a cage on the planet Tralfamador. To describe Billy’s unusual flow of experience, Vonnegut coined the now well-known phrase, unstuck in time.

In Billy’s case, we might surmise that his non-linear experience of time is a result of PTSD from his World War II experiences, having witnessed the carnage of war and lived through the fire-bombing of Dresden. 

PTSD is a sort of like this. Those with PTSD can relive past events as if they were happening right now. To be unstuck in time in this way is unsettling at the least, and often very anxiety provoking, carrying the residue of all the emotions that were triggered by the trauma.…

American writer, poet, feminist, and civil rights activist Audre Lorde once noted, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” I find this statement, this proclamation of what is so commonly experienced and much less often discussed, to be particularly powerful. In a straightforward and unpretentious manner, it draws our attention to an experience that is shared and universal among humans, while at the same time being inherently unique and distinct from person to person.

One aspect of this quote which resonates with me is the notion…scratch that…the undeniable reality that as humans, we are complex, nuanced, multi-layered beings who are comprised of a vast constellation of identities, roles, and positions in the world. What Audre Lorde is drawing our attention to is the concept of intersectionality. You likely have come across this term…