CARBONDALE -- Dawn Prince is using what she learned watching snow monkeys on the Shiga Mountains in Japan to help kids and adults in Carbondale dealing with trauma.

The Muay Thai second degree black belt teaches three classes at the First Christian Church of Carbondale in Snow Monkey Martial Arts, helping her students work through trauma experienced through abuse and drug or alcohol addiction.

"Once I was starting to watch what the monkeys were actually doing I thought, 'Wow, those were all really martial arts moves,'" Prince said. "Those are clearly the way that a primate body was designed to move everyday. They're so playful, and I thought, 'What a great light-hearted way to move through your day.'"

Prince, who struggled herself with drugs and alcohol and was homeless for five years, said life is often a traumatic experience that locks people up in their own bodies.

The holder of a Ph.D. in anthropology said people tend to move through life in very guarded ways and her mix of Muay Thai and the natural movements of Snow Monkeys helps free people, allowing them to "move" naturally through their trauma.

"If you move your body and stimulate the centers of your body that are shut down from trauma, you actually will learn to get better," Prince said. "There are actually a lot of scientific studies that show martial arts are great treatments for PTSD, past physical trauma and abuse you've done to your body with drugs and alcohol."

Kids particularly enjoy the classes that allow them to actually act like monkeys, performing moves such as "monkey grabs branch," "monkey reaches around a tree" and "monkey hangs on the rail."

The kids' class provides time for the kids to have a snack and talk about their experiences.

With some of the kids coming from troubled backgrounds, many are hesitant about the class and assume they won't enjoy it. But she said their defenses often break down as the class develops.

"Pretty soon, you see them lightening up, starting to smile and you can visibly see they're literally moving through trauma, they're digesting these things that have happened to them and really embracing the idea that it's a richness in their lives they can learn from," Prince said. "They don't have to stay stuck in the anger, embarrassment and shame."

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Martial arts class helps kids and adults work through trauma

Yenpitsu Nemoto/Ikon Images/Corbis

Yenpitsu Nemoto/Ikon Images/Corbis

Any color you choose can be matched by a mixture of short, medium and long wavelength light (i.e., blue, green and red light). This perceptual observation led to the formulation, early in the 19th century, of a neurophysiological hypothesis: The eye contains three kinds of distinct color-sensitive receptors (cones); just as colors themselves can be composed of lights of different spectral character, so we can see the vast range of visible color thanks to the joint operation of only three distinct kinds of receptors.

This is a beautiful example of the primacy of experience in the study of the brain-basis of consciousness. Before you can even begin to think about how the brain enables us to see or feel or (more generally) experience what we do, you need to pay careful attention to what our experience is actually like.

And, so, it was further attention to the experience that led scientists to realize the shortcomings of what came to be known as the Trichromatic Theory of Color.

Consider: You get purple by mixing blue and red light. Indeed, purple is just a reddish-blue or a bluish-red; you can actually see the red and blue in the purple, and you can imagine a purple becoming more and more blue until it is entirely blue.

The Trichromatic Theory tries to explain these phenomena by suggesting that we see purple when our red and blue sensitive cones (that is, our long wave- and short wave-sensitive cones) are activated at the same time. Different purples correspond to different ratios of activation.

But now, consider the case of yellow. You get yellow by mixing red and green light, just as you get purple by mixing red and blue. But yellow isn't reddish-green or greenish-red in the way that purple is reddish-blue. In fact, there is no such thing as reddish-green. Moreover, you don't see red or green in yellow the way you see blue and red in purple. Yellow, like blue and red, but not like purple, is unary, not binary.

The Trichromatic Theory has no resources to explain facts about color vision such as these. In order to explain them, neurophysiologists were led to propose a totally different kind of theory of neural processing beyond the retina (the so-called Opponent Processing Theory).

I speak of the primacy of experience in order to bring out the fact that an investigation of what we see a careful reflection on rules governing our experience is a necessary preliminary to the neurophysiological study of how neural states support and enable consciousness.

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In Search Of A Science Of Consciousness

THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF WORLD RELIGIONS Volume II: Judaism, Christianity, Islam Edited by Jack Miles, David Biale, Lawrence S Cunningham and Jane Dammen McAuliffe W W Norton & Company; 2,182 pages; $100 (Sold together with "Volume I: Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism")

At a time when religious faith is coming under intense scrutiny, The Norton Anthology of World Religions is presenting a documentary history of six major faiths with sufficient editorial explanation to make their major texts intelligible across the barriers of time and space. This second volume in the series is a textual overview of the three monotheisms - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - from the early scriptures to contemporary writings. It is presented as a journey of exploration, but any reader who hopes to emerge from this literary excursion with a clear-cut understanding of these religions will be disappointed - and that is the great strength of this book.

First, the selected Jewish writings show that contrary to some popular assumptions, religion does not offer unsustainable certainty. The biblical story of the binding of Isaac leaves us with hard questions about Abraham's God, and later, when Moses asks this baffling deity for his name, he simply answers: "Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh", which can be roughly translated: "Never mind who I am!"

At its best, religion helps people to live creatively and kindly with the inescapable sorrow and perplexity of human existence. Today, believers and non-believers alike tend to read Scripture with a dogged literalness, but in the premodern period traditional exegesis in all three monotheisms was a form of intense creativity.

Thus the Talmudic rabbis developed an inventive form of exegesis that they called midrash (from darash : "to investigate"). They imagined Moses returning to earth in the second century B.C. as a yeshiva boy and, to his consternation, finding that he could not understand a word of Rabbi Akiba's explication of his own Torah: "Matters that had not been disclosed to Moses were disclosed to Rabbi Akiba and his colleagues." Sinai had been just the beginning. Revelation was an ongoing process and would continue every time a Jew confronted the sacred text; it was the responsibility of each generation to continue the process.

Scripture did not, therefore, imprison the faithful in outmoded habits of thought. In his selection of Christian texts, Lawrence S Cunningham hints that some of the Gospel stories may also be a form of inventive midrash that drew on texts from the Hebrew Bible, but unfortunately he does not spell this out clearly to the reader.

In the same way, the Quran was never read by itself but always in the context of an immense and intricate net of commentary that developed over the centuries - mystical, philosophical, legal and logical. The Arabic quran means "recitation," and, Jane Dammen McAuliffe explains, the physical text was always secondary to its oral performance in the mosque. God himself had insisted that the Quranic message must be understood as a whole and explicitly warned Muslims against drawing partial conclusions from the text. A far cry from the two British jihadis who ordered "Islam for Dummies" from Amazon when they travelled to Syria last May.

The habit of regarding the Bible as historically accurate dates only to the Protestant Reformation; that outlook has since passed to the Muslim world. In a 2003 essay, the South African scholar Ebrahim Moosa complained that the practice of reading the Quran like "an engineering manual" had created a "text fundamentalism" that distorted its message. The appearance of the printed page, an image of precision and exactitude, also symbolised the developing scientific and commercial outlook, and has, perhaps, helped to give birth to a distinctively "modern" view of religion as logical, unmediated and objective. But like art, the truths of faith rely on intuition rather than logic.

At a time when religion is often regarded as inherently violent, the anthology reminds us that it has also been a force for peace. The insights of Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr and Desmond Tutu all show that a passion for justice, non-violence and integrity have been just as important in the history of Christianity as any Crusade. This anthology will also challenge those who believe that Islam is irredeemably intolerant and fanatical. The classical account of the prophet's ascension to heaven, the mythical paradigm of authentic Muslim spirituality, is also a story of pluralism, since the prophets of all three monotheisms greet one another as brothers and listen respectfully to each other's insights.

But, alas, religiously articulated violence is now a fact of life. McAuliffe includes the work of Sayyid Qutb, one of the Muslim thinkers responsible for the modern enthusiasm for jihad and Osama bin Laden's declaration of war on the "Judaeo-Crusader alliance." But when we also read Malcolm X explaining that his experience of the inclusiveness of the hajj inspired him to renounce his former racism; Fethullah Glen, who insists that tolerance, forgiveness and love are central to Islam; and Tariq Ramadan, who instructs Western Muslims to embrace democracy, we gain a wider perspective. Unfortunately the Jewish and Christian editors have not included their own perpetrators of violence and intolerance in the anthology, leaving the reader, perhaps, with the misleading impression that Islam alone is guilty of this abuse of faith, even though Rabbi Meir Kahane and the Reconstructionist Gary North are also part of our modern story.

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Monotheism's nuanced uncertainties

With all the cultural decay going on around us, it is not surprising that we should see problems within the bosom of the institution called the Church.

The Church confronts an increasingly secular paradigm characterised by burgeoning hedonism, crass materialism and an obsession with power and status that breeds selfishness and exploitation.

In the 20th century, scientific and technological advances as well as trends in humanistic and social scientific thought, seriously diminished the spiritual parameters in western culture.

Long before, Emmanuel Kant had observed that the impact of liberal enlightenment on our spiritual life was such that if someone walked in while you were on your knees praying, you might be profoundly embarrassed.

Much is said about the failings of the Church by which is meant what the Reformation scholars called the Visible Church, organised religious organisations, always to be distinguished from the Invisible Church, the brotherhood of all believers and known only to Christ.

Someone once observed that the Church is a hospital for sick Christians and we are reminded that Christ came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Thus it might be fitting if the Church is full of persons in want of spiritual healing, and who among us are not.

The historic visible church has never been immune to schism, heresy, and moral pollution reflecting the sinful nature of mankind, for it may have been St Augustine who voiced that nothing straight has ever been created out of the crooked timber of humanity.

It is not difficult to be cynical about organised religion considering the plethora of denominations springing up all over the place each claiming to have some monopoly on truth and each pastor, apostle, and prophet, most with their qualifying doctorates of divinity, assuming to hear the voice of the one true God. Scandals over the past two decades in almost all sects, not least the Catholic paedophilia scourge, has weakened faith in many of the proclaimers of Christs Gospel.

However, he himself said that many would come in his name, hirelings whose own the sheep are not. When Pope Francis ascended the papacy and began his reforms, a friend in Argentina advised him to be careful because the friend warned: The Borgias are still in the Vatican, a reference to the infamous family a scion of which (Rodrigo Borgia) became Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503).

As with all mythologies (mythology used purely to mean a theoretical construct), Christian claims to ideological purity and certitude has historically led to gross intolerance and obscurantism of dogma.

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THE BIG PICTURE: The Church of Christ

SANTA ROSA, CA (PRWEB) December 17, 2014

"The Holy Universe" a new story of creation for the heart, soul, and spirit is the winner of a 2014 Silver Nautilus Book Award and a USA Best Books Award. Judges at Writers Digest magazine also gave the book their highest marks of outstanding for writing style as well as structure, organization, and pacing.

Written by Northern California author David Christopher, The Holy Universe earned its Silver Nautilus Award in the category of Religion/Spirituality Other, a fitting tribute for a book offering a new narrative that transforms cold, scientific facts about the origin of life into a soulful story of creation that moves beyond religious dogma. Previous Nautilus award winners include Deepak Chopra, Barbara Kingsolver, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Marianne Williamson. The 2014 USA Best Book Awards also honored The Holy Universe as the winner in its Spirituality: General category.

These awards and positive reviews are a wonderful affirmation of this work not only because its an honor receive them, but also because they recognize that readers have a deep hunger for a new story about our relationship to the web of life, Christopher said.

I wrote The Holy Universe for people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious, Christopher added. This book is for those of us who are unsatisfied with religious interpretations about how life began, but also find that the Big Dumb Rock story put out there by the modern mechanistic worldview leaves us lost in a meaningless universe and longing for a creation story that speaks to our spirits as well as our intellects.

The Holy Universe unfolds in poetic stanzas as a dialogue between a Seeker and his Sage, who discuss everything from social justice and spiritual poverty to reverent technology and climate change. Because these issues particularly resonate with the concerns of new thought churches, the book has found a receptive audience among participants in Unitarian Universalist, Centers for Spiritual Living, and Unity Center groups as well as United Church of Christ and liberal Catholic congregations.

Evaluating the book for the 22nd Annual Writers Digest Self-Published Book Awards, judges gave The Holy Universe the highest rank of 5 out of 5 for several writing rubrics. As one judge observed, Throughout this grand work, Christopher succeeds in showing many truths rather than telling them. And, another concluded: The author has done our planet a favor and contributed to its well being by writing this story.

In addition to receiving book awards, The Holy Universe has also been praised by a number of New York Times bestselling authors including Vicki Robin and John Perkins, as well as John Robbins (Diet for a New America), who said: For those of us who have respect for the scientific method but who also seek a spirituality unburdened by the chains of dogma, who seek a deep connection with Creation that is based in awe and reverence for nature and the cosmos David Christopher has done a marvelous job in helping us reclaim the word Holy.

For further information or to subscribe to The Holy Universe newsletter, please go to: http://theholyuniverse.com/

Download sample chapters and other material: http://theholyuniverse.com/downloads-available/

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Transcending Creationism vs Evolution: The Holy Universe Wins Nautilus & USA Best Book Awards and Praise from Writers ...

52 minutes ago by Jonathan Garlick, The Conversation Everyone needs to understand the basics of science to participate fully in the democratic process. Credit: http://www.shutterstock.com.

Science isn't important only to scientists or those who profess an interest in it. Whether you find fascinating every new discovery reported or you stopped taking science in school as soon as you could, a base level understanding is crucial for modern citizens to ground their engagement in the national conversation about science-related issues.

We need to look no further than the Ebola crisis to appreciate the importance of science literacy. A recently elected senator has linked sealing the US-Mexican border with keeping Ebola out of the US, even though the disease is nonexistent in Mexico. Four out of 10 Americans believe there will be a large scale Ebola epidemic here, even though there have been just four cases in the US and only one fatality. Flu, on the other hand, which killed over 100 children here last winter, barely registers in the public consciousness.

Increasingly we must grapple with highly-charged and politicized science-based issues ranging from infectious diseases and human cloning to reproductive choices and climate change. Yet many perhaps even the majority of Americans aren't sufficiently scientifically literate to make sense of these complicated issues. For instance, on one recent survey of public attitudes and understanding of science and technology, Americans barely got a passing grade, answering only 5.8 out of 9 factual knowledge questions correctly.

Without a solid understanding of the underlying science and its implications for our daily lives, we can neither respond intelligently on a personal level nor hold our public officials accountable for sound policy decisions. Moreover, we risk falling prey to the tremendous power of fear and partisan political rhetoric. By grounding our understanding of issues in knowledge, we can gain the confidence to participate in the science conversation in a thoughtful way. Science literacy is a path to that knowledge.

What's needed to be scientifically literate?

Science literacy is a foundational knowledge and understanding of scientific concepts and processes. For example, scientifically literate people should know that science is reproducible, evidence-based information that is fact and not opinion. They should have a working knowledge of the basic terminology needed to interpret the processes and outcomes of science. With this vocabulary in hand, they can engage in the critical thinking needed to apply healthy skepticism and to discern the grey areas and uncertainties inherent in science-based information.

As a stem cell scientist, I have spent my life tackling elusive questions such as "what is personhood" or "when does life begin." Recently, my interest has shifted to helping the public engage in open-minded discussions about these types of questions.

The goal isn't to move public opinion towards one side or another of the stem cell or any other debate, but rather to create a forum in which all sides are armed with basic scientific knowledge and have a legitimate voice in the conversation.

How to get literate

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To seek common ground on life's big questions, we need science literacy

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Newswise WASHINGTON Adolescents who attend religious services with one or both of their parents are more likely to feel greater well-being while romantic partners who pray for their significant others experience greater relationship commitment, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

These were among the findings of studies published in two special sections of APAs Journal of Family Psychology looking at how spiritual beliefs or behaviors have appeared to strengthen generally happy marriages and how a persons religious and/or spiritual functioning may influence that of his or her family members.

These studies exemplify an emerging subfield called relational spirituality, which focuses on the ways that diverse couples and families can rely on specific spiritual beliefs and behaviors, for better or worse, to motivate them to create, maintain and transform their intimate relationships, according to Annette Mahoney, PhD, of Bowling Green State University, and Annamarie Cano, PhD, of Wayne State University, who edited special sections in the December and October issues of the journal. Hopefully, publishing these articles will spur more research on ways that religion and spirituality can help or harm couples and families relationships and encourage more interchange between family psychology and the psychology of religion and spirituality.

The December issue features five studies that offer novel insights into how religiosity or spiritualism affect childrens development and influence the importance of religion in their own lives.

The October section comprises four studies that focus on the ways that couples can draw on religious/spiritual beliefs and behaviors to transform their unions and help them cope with adversity. Each of the studies in the October special section moves beyond general measures of peoples involvement in organized religion or spirituality and investigates specific spiritual beliefs or behaviors that appear to influence marital adjustment and human development, according to APA President Nadine J. Kaslow, PhD, editor of the Journal of Family Psychology. All the studies present rigorous research into the roles that religion and spirituality can play in enhancing family well-being.

Articles in the December issue:

Religious Socialization in African-American Families: The Relative Influence of Parents, Grandparents, and Siblings by Ian A. Gutierrez, MA, University of Connecticut; Lucas J. Goodwin, MA, New York University; Katherine Kirkinis, MA, Teachers College, Columbia University; and Jacqueline S. Mattis, PhD, New York University. Looking at three generations, the researchers found that mothers have the most consistently positive influence on the religious lives of their children because they are socialized to transmit critical values, beliefs and practices across generations, and because they embrace norms of femininity that reinforce such roles. Additionally, grandparents especially grandmothers play a significant role in the religious socialization of grandchildren in African-American families, according to this research. Contact: Ian Gutierrez at ian.gutierrez@uconn.edu

Neighborhood Disorder, Spiritual Well-Being and Parenting Stress in African American Women by Dorian A. Lamis, PhD, and Christina K. Wilson, PhD, Emory University School of Medicine; Nicholas Tarantino, MA, Georgia State University; Jennifer E. Lansford, PhD, Duke University; and Nadine J. Kaslow, PhD, Emory University School of Medicine Low-income African-American women who were primary caregivers of children between 8 and 12 and lived in disorderly neighborhoods experienced lower levels of parenting stress if they exhibited existential and/or religious well-being, according to this study. Contact: Nadine Kaslow at nkaslow@emory.edu

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Religion or Spirituality Has Positive Impact on Romantic/Marital Relationships, Child Development, Research Shows