For me, high school felt like a movie.

As a star linebacker on my high school football team, I was in the newspaper every week. People would stop me on the street to talk with me about a game I had played.

Thirteen Division I schools tried to recruit me before I selected the University of Oregon.

After I graduated from high school, I was ready to take the next stepI thought.

In 2010, I left for the University of Oregon, which was 1,000 miles away from my home in the greater San Bernardino area. My life did not keep going the way it always had. I struggled to connect with people.

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We were all from different backgrounds and cultures from all over the U.S., but because we were so different, I found myself feeling judged or misunderstoodwhich caused me to shell up and suppress my emotions.

And that was the biggest contributor to depression. Growing up I was always expressive and not afraid to be vulnerable or share my emotions, and that was widely accepted in my hometown. But when I went to college, I quickly realized I was in a different environment.

Things escalated when I was forced to redshirt and to sit out my freshmen year. I was 18-years-old, two months out of high school, playing a game with grown men. I wasn't the biggest, the fastest, or the strongest person on the field. Which was a hard concept for me to accept, but I was forced to redshirt until I was prepared and trusted on the field.

I was devastated. I went from being a happy-go-lucky teenager, to being a depressed college student within three months.

As my emotion struggles built up, I started having thoughts of self-harm. As a subconscious cry for help, I even shaved my entire head bald.

Thankfully, someone from my team's football staff noticed my behavior and reached out. It was the first time anyone asked how I was feeling or asked if I was struggling during college. That conversation may have saved my life.

I started seeing a therapist, where I was diagnosed with severe depression. Therapy helped power me through the rest of my freshman year.

First, I learned to control what I could control. Sometimes certain situations are out of my control, but it's up to me to live in the present moment, and only focus on the things I can influence. Although I redshirted my freshman year, which was out of my control, I focused on my training and preparation. That's the only thing I could control, and I had to have faith that everything would play out for the best.

Second, I learned self awareness. I learned to be conscious of my thoughts, feelings, and actions. I was able to gain an understanding of how my thoughts, feelings, and actions affect those around me. All in all, self-awareness turned into self-love, which turned into empathy and compassion for others.

Over the next few years life turned around for me. Even though I suffered some significant injuriesbusting both my right and left shoulder within two months in 2013it was from getting more playing time, and I eventually became team captain.

After graduating college, I became an unrestricted free agent for the Atlanta Falcons after the 2015 draft.

I had achieved a goal I'd set at 15-years-old to play football in the NFL.

Although I was picked up by the Falcons in May, he was released in June after failing a physical. It turned out that the injuries I'd sustained during college were worse than I'd realized.

After I got released, I went back to Oregon, got an MRI, and found out I played with a fractured shoulder socket for about a year and didnt know.

Just days after my 23rd birthday and my third shoulder surgery, a doctor recommended that I stop playing football. This was during very difficult break up with his long-time girlfriend. I didn't have a job. I didn't have a home.

For months I slept on any couch I could find. To survive, I had to sell the majority of my college jerseys. My depression was at an all-time high and I had no answers on how to overcome it.

On August 24th, 2015, I wrote a blog post called Depression, I Struggle Too. It was the first time I publicly shared his mental health struggles.

Its when I realized what my purpose was.

Thats when I started changing every aspect of his life. I listened to self-help audiobooks, like The Power of Vulnerability by Bren Brown. I was afraid of how that stigma of being vulnerable would bleed into my life, but through that book, I realized that vulnerability will change the world.

The Power of Vulnerability

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I also started meditating, using the app Headspace to clear my mind. And while I had physically therapy twice a week, hed also go to the gym to focus on my lower body and my shoulders' range of motion.

After four to six months, I started seeing a difference in myself. I used all that I'd gone through to start putting my new purpose to work.

One of those ways was collaborating with the University of Oregon. I created a mental health video that they show to each of the incoming freshmen athletes.

Most recently, I was asked to be part of Gillettes new campaign, #TheBestMenCanBe, as well a project w/ NBC Sports called On the Other Side.

I also started a podcast, Normally Unstable, where I share stories of vulnerability.

Fifteen-year-old Malone assumed that playing football was the be-all-and-end-all. But now, at 27, I sees that its all the life lessons I've endured through the years that happen for a reason.

Link:
Derrick Malone, Jr., Went from Homeless to Helping Others - Men's Health

Women from self-help groups are earning over Rs 500 per day each by making masks in the state at the rate of Rs 3.5 per mask, said Andhra Pradesh government on Sunday.This comes in the backdrop of Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddys directives to provide them employment to overcome the COVID-19 crisis.

The masks being manufactured by women are being distributed in the Red Zones and will soon cater to the needs of others also. The womens groups have prepared 7.28 lakh masks till date, said Chief Ministers Office in a statement.

They plan to increase the output to 30 lakh per day in four to five daysThe statement said the CM personally supervised and formally launched the manufacture of masks at his residence today.

Nearly 40,000 lady tailors from among the self-help groups have been selected and the work of making masks has been taken up on a war-footing. The details regarding the same are being uploaded to realtime data, it added.

The initiative is part of the Chief Ministers decision to supply 16 crore masks in the state, with three masks per head, for curbing the spread of the virus.

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Women Self Help Groups at the forefront to provide handmade masks in Andhra Pradesh - TheDispatch

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort, one of the subjects of William Leiths new book. Photograph: Paramount

William Leiths primary subject has always been appetite, and its close cousins compulsion and obsession. He first explored these themes in his newspaper columns, stagily self-absorbed fragments of a hungover life, and subsequently in two addictive books. The first, The Hungry Years, set his own capacity for excess in food and drink and drugs against a culture high on consumption; the second, Bits of Me Are Falling Apart, was a sometimes poignant, always curious, mediation on mortality, the consequences of that bingers lifestyle. Both books were revelatory and funny, and dramatised their own premise way, way too much.

The Trick takes all of Leiths writing habits his mazy streams of consciousness (few writers are quite so enamoured of, or good at, watching themselves think) and his love of axiom and, if anything, ups the ante. His subject here, is one that has always nagged away underneath his tales of excess if he wants so much, why has he often been so profligate in his attempts to get it? Why has he been unable, that is, to accumulate wealth rather than debt?

Leith has, over three decades as a magazine journalist, done more than his fair share of profiles of the rich and the super-rich. It is not, therefore, as though he has not seen them in action, questioned their motivations, studied their life choices why have none of those traits of success rubbed off? If he is so good at understanding what makes his subjects tick, why can he not apply that wisdom to his own bank balance?

This quest in search of the trick of outrageous fortune begins with one of those commissions. He has been asked to interview Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street, who made a dizzying fortune and then lost it, after the greed that made him a millionaire made him a criminal. Leith conjures in perfect comic detail the strange pauper-and-prince life of the journalist sent on such an assignment, the weird afternoons of access to lives that sell magazines; access that, in him, only sharpens a sense of not having the secret key to that world to the country mansion, the minimalist architectural porn while simultaneously despising it. A snapshot of my mind, as I walk through the automatic door of the Chelsea Harbour hotel [to meet Belfort]. I am thinking about the rich. All my ideas and experiences are packaged into a powerful emotion a powerfully negative emotion. The rich, it tells me, are sad and delusional and so is the part of me that yearns to be rich.

Belfort lets him in on the secret of his success, just as those other multimillionaires he has profiled before Alan Sugar, Felix Dennis, Howard Schultz of Starbucks, a Russian oligarch named, appropriately, Max have let him in on theirs. And over the course of this book, Leith turns those secrets, nearly all of them platitudes over and over in his head, like a Samuel Beckett monologuist trying and failing to write a self-help manual.

He listens to Belforts wisdom on a loop: The only thing that stops you from getting what you want in life is the bullshit story you tell yourself about why you cant have it. Leith comes to realise his whole life is that story, but how to end it? He re-examines some of the more disastrous financial decisions of his life, the times he has had money and watched it slip through his fingers (Its like I actively want to be poor); he searches out game-theory billionaires like Nassim Nicholas Taleb and economic philosophers such as Matt Ridley who presided over the run on Northern Rock and responded by writing a book called The Rational Optimist.

And the more we watch him listen, the closer he gets to the trick itself. This being Leith, he boils it down a few times to the kind of wisdom that always sounds too simple to be true. Youll find the right path by taking lots of wrong paths. Be the brain surgeon and the mad axeman. Even as he writes them, he knows he will never learn them he thinks too much but it is, nevertheless hugely enjoyable watching him try.

The Trick by William Leith is published by Bloomsbury (20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over 15

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The Trick review - William Leith on how to make a packet - The Guardian

I need to be really picky Tamsin Greig. Photograph: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images

What was your reaction when asked to play Malvolia? I was offered Olivia but she wasnt on my list of must-play roles. Theatre is such a commitment I need to be really picky. Its a big deal, being out every night and away from family. The National came back with the idea of Malvolio and my interest was piqued. The director Simon Godwin and I read the play a lot together, just the two of us, and then with Ben Power, deputy artistic director at the NT, and then with a group of actors. But part of me was quite resistant. They said what about making the character Malvolia so youre playing a woman? We did more workshops. I was very nervous of making Malvolio a woman and therefore a lesbian, considering what happens to the character in the play, which is monstrous.

How did you balance the elements of comedy and cruelty?I wanted to find out more about the ridiculousness in Malvolia. Sometimes people develop coping strategies that make them foolish. Malvolia is a deeply wounded human being who becomes OCD and bullies the other people in the household in order to cope. She meets her match in Feste. I thought it was a brilliant idea to invite Doon Mackichan to play Feste and to make Fabian become Fabia. Youve then got two more women who are the authors of the cruelty against Malvolia, alongside Maria. I thought that was interesting there is so much cruelty against women perpetrated by women themselves. The self-judgment of women is awful. We started exploring what it was about Feste that enabled her to be so calculatedly and comically cruel to Malvolia.

As Malvolia, you use precise hand gestures that tell us much about the characterIts an outward expression of her need to create order out of chaos. Hand gestures are often so much about threat and control. I trained as a dancer and am interested in what the whole body does. The way we express ourselves goes right to the very tips of our fingers. There is a moment when Malvolia comes on and tells Olivia there is a boy at the door who wont go away. I started to use a repeated gesture of pushing him towards her. Then Phoebe Fox, as Olivia, says to tell him to go away and she repeats the gesture back. Malvolia gets rather confused about why Olivia is using that gesture so does it again. It became a beautiful moment.

Malvolias judgment of the other characters extends towards the audience. How was that idea developed?I was overwhelmed by the size of the Olivier theatre, particularly in the letter scene which could be seen as a monologue. But I dont think Shakespeare ever allows monologues to be internal. Its a process of working out what you think about something in the company of 1,000 or so people in the audience. Who those people are is up to the actor to decide. I felt that Malvolia had a lot of internal voices which were powerful and controlling. So the audience embodied those internal voices and during the letter scene she is engaging with them to help her work out what this all means. I was afraid of it but the stage is so well designed to hold all of those people that it became weirdly intimate. The audiences delight in the comic thrust of that scene encourages Malvolia. No internal voice stops her there is no voice of reason.

When I was reading the script I didnt know how to pronounce flough in the letter. I said it in different ways to Simon and he laughed. Later he said: lets keep that in maybe Malvolia doesnt know how to say it? Then I thought suppose one of the internal voices can help her pronounce it. Each night I elicited someone from the audience to tell me how to say it, so they are effectively egging her on in her belief. When, at the end, she says she will be revenged on the whole pack of them its Malvolia realising that no one was courageous enough to stop her and tell her shes being ridiculous.

For the NT Live filming, how do you modulate your usual stage performance?When we rehearsed for the NT Live version we did it without an audience and I fell apart I couldnt remember the lines. Malvolia works when she is in relationship to the audience rather than many of the other characters. A large part of the stalls was filled with camera equipment and it becomes difficult to engage with a body of people. Its a bit like when I did Black Books, which was filmed in front of a live audience. Its hard to know whether youre playing to that number of people in the room or in a quiet way to the camera. You find a balance between the magnitude and the intimacy.

In every Twelfth Night we await Malvolios yellow stockings scene. Yours becomes a cabaret-style showstopperIts such a hot moment in the play. At the time, a puritan coming on in yellow stockings would have been unbearably shocking. I thought in this hyperreal world, where shes a woman, what would be shocking about her wearing yellow tights? So we needed to push it to find ultimate embarrassment. And because I have teenagers I thought what would upset them most to see me doing? I said to the designer Soutra Gilmour that this moment reminded me of popping corn: you have a dry kernel and you cook it in the pan with butter and it pops. Soutra created this amazing costume she wanted Malvolias pierrot cape to look like a piece of popped corn. The composer Michael Bruce had written all this beautiful smooth jazz for the production cool, melancholic, quite sexy. I told him well need something for Malvolias number when she comes down the stairs in yellow stockings. I just meant a piece of music but Michael came in the next day and hed put a Shakespeare sonnet to music. In one evening! He said: Yeah, and youre going to sing it! Well, it would have been rude not to!

What other Shakespeare parts are on your to-do list?I always used to say I didnt want to play Lady Macbeth because I find it too frightening. She really faces the darkest part of herself. But Id love to give that a go. I dont want to be the go-to actor who plays traditionally male roles. But I do think Simon Godwin is on to something about the need to re-envision Shakespeare plays. You know how they did Frankenstein at the NT with two actors swapping roles? Wouldnt it be interesting if you had male and female actors swapping Macbeth and Lady Macbeth?

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Tamsin Greig on Twelfth Night: 'The self-judgment of women is awful' - The Guardian

In ancient Indian sanskrit, the word "sneha" means "to oil," as well as "to love"and that's no coincidence.

As the 5,000-year-old Indian science of Ayurveda has fast gained traction within the modern wellness movement, so has one of its most sacred above-neck rituals: Hair-oiling. The treatment, typically practiced before taking a shower or before bed at night, consists of harnessing the regenerative powers of natural oils by working them into the scalp and hair for moisture and nourishment. "It reduces dryness and gives your hair strength, shininess, thickness and softness," says AnantaRipa Ajmera, a certified Ayurvedic health practitioner and director of Ayurveda at New York City health club The Well. In traditional Ayurvedic texts, sesame oil is recommended in the cold seasons and coconut oil is utilized in the hotter seasons for their respective warming and cooling effects. For enhanced benefits, Ayurvedic herbssuch as thickening hibiscus, growth-stimulating amalaki, antimicrobial bhringraj, or protective brahmican be infused into the oil, says Ajmera. Along with saturating strands, a head massage (gently kneading the scalp, temples, and neck with the fingertips), is an integraland ultimately catharticpart of the experience. "It helps to exfoliate, moisturize, and improve circulation in the scalp so that you're addressing hair health at the root," explains Divya Viswanathan, co-founder of Ayurvedic beauty brand Taza."It is also believed to activate the seventh chakra, the crown chakra, which is connected to the pineal glad and works to calm the mind."

Going beyond beauty, hair-oiling is also a tradition of bonding that's been passed down from generation to generation. "Every summer, our grandma used to come from India with these Ayurvedic ingredients and make these natural hair potions while telling us ancient fablesit was haircare and story time," explains Akash Mehta, who has teamed up with his sister Nikita on Fable & Mane, a new hair-care lined inspired by the Indian hair rituals and Panchatantrasancient animal fablesthey grew up with. "A few years ago, my hair started falling out, so I started going into the kitchen and mixing the oils my grandmother used and they worked wonders," explains Nikita of the driving catalyst behind the brand, which will have select proceeds going toward tiger conservation in India. "Life was so fast-paced, I really wanted to get back to these ancient at-home traditions and that became our whole brand mission." With their lightweight HoliRoots oil, a prewash treatment laced with anti-inflammatory ashwagandha, healing dashmool, and circulation-boosting castor oil, the pair set out to create a replenishing "roots for roots" treatment that calls for its user to pause for a few minutes and, in turn, make the daily ritual of showering a more a "relaxing and meditative" experience. Better yet, they encourage a partner or family member to become a part of the process, administering the treatment to bring that intimacy and sense of human touch.

"I vividly remember my mum massaging oil into my scalp and temples thoroughly, and then onto hers once I was done," recalls Indian model and illustrator Namita Sunil of her childhood in her native Kerala, India. "It's a tradition that's often passed on from every mother in a family." Her mother's go-to homemade mixture was made from hibiscus flowers, which were crushed into a paste and mixed with oil. "No matter how frizzy or curly the average Keralite women's hair was, it would be shiny and slicked down at the scalp," she explains."For girls my generation, this was our sole childhood hair care routine, and there are still plenty of older women with the same shine in their hair." For Viswanathan, it remains a "truly ceremonious" act. "Growing up, my grandma would massage my mom's hair, while my mom massaged mine," she explains. "Now, I continue this ritual both individually, as well as perform it with my daughter."

Amid the many changes that have come with the coronavirus pandemic, hair-oiling can be a soothing act that helps keep you present. "It really is the perfect self-love and self-care practice to nurture yourself through all the uncertainty we are facing right now," says Ajmera. "It also takes time to get used to adding new practices to your routine, so starting to incorporate this practice when you can during quarantine will help you make a new habit out of it that you can return to even when we re-emerge into the world." And if you want to take it a step further, Viswanathan recommends hair-oiling in tandem with a full-body abhyanga, or self-massage, which helps reduce inflammation, promote lymphatic drainage, and hydrate the skin to leave you feeling more grounded and centered all over. Taking time out of the day for such deeply personal practices may feel like a foreign undertaking, but take encouragement from the fact this isn't exactly unchartered territory. As Akash points out, "Hair-oiling is new to many, but its benefits have been proven from centuries of ancient tradition."

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Why the Ancient Indian Tradition of Hair-Oiling Is the Perfect Form of Self-Care for Right Now - Vogue

Unlike adults, children seem to be less vulnerable to the effects of the coronavirus, with few needing hospitalization or ventilator support. But many children are and will be profoundly affected across the United States and worldwide.

There won't be a diagnostic test to tell us which children have been affected, the way a nasal swab might yield a positive result for the coronavirus. However, we will see consequences across all ages and stages of life, both because of the things they will experience and because they will see their parents struggling with other challenges. Moods might change or favorite games might not be fun anymore. The more lasting consequences can include mental and physical illness. Some children will experience strong emotional reactions simply by being aware of the existential threat of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. And others still may not even be aware of the events playing out around them but will nevertheless be affected by them.

Older children can, of course, be shaken up by stressful events unfolding around them. Puberty is a particularly crucial time for growth and development in key parts of the brain that control emotion regulation and cognitive function. Stress during this vulnerable period can be especially damaging to children who already have accumulated trauma in their lives and further increases the chance a child will develop anxiety, depression or even schizophrenia. Exposed adolescents are at higher risk for risk-seeking behaviors, setting the stage for violence and drug abuse.

There's also ample research to show that a parent's well-being can affect that of their children. Psychological stress during pregnancy increases the likelihood that a baby will be born prematurely and the chance that a child will need breathing and feeding support in the neonatal intensive care unit. Stress can be an endocrine disrupter, in the same way that synthetic chemicals disrupt hormonal functions that shape the development of the brain and other body systems. We don't routinely check cortisol levels in infants, but if we did, we would see higher levels of this stress hormone, because mothers can transmit stress or depression to their infants. Children who suffered the ill effects of toxic stress during pregnancy also have reduced lung function at school age. Stress can increase unhealthy diet and physical activity behaviors in school-age kids, showing up as weight gain that increases the risk of later heart disease.

The effects of stress from the coronavirus pandemic may propagate for generations to come. The Dutch Hunger Winter in 1944-45 showed us how environmental stressors in pregnancy can have effects that reverberate all the way to the grandchildren. Stresses like these change how our genes are imprinted, turning genes on or off without changing the underlying genetic code. These imprints can modify how genes are expressed, not just in those who are exposed, but after they are passed on to the next generation, programming a ticking time bomb of disease that appears as much as 70 years later.

The parallels to the Dutch Hunger Winter are surprisingly relevant for the children living in the poorest households, even in a country where food is plentiful. In our experience working at Bellevue Hospital in New York, these families rely on the public school system for meals for their children. Now, they are reluctant to open their doors, let alone go to community centers for meals delivered there by the city government. When they go out for food, they may resort to the closest and cheapest options rather than the healthiest. Coronavirus-related job and income losses may magnify extant household stressors.

Research on the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and other disasters can give us some insight on how to treat and, more importantly, prevent harm. Children of first responders were particularly affected, suggesting that we should focus on families of those who are grappling directly with the crisis, including health-care personnel, who are likely to be at higher risk. Direct experience, such as witnessing the fall of the twin towers in 2001 or thinking a loved one might be hurt, predicted post-traumatic stress symptoms six to seven years after 9/11. People who previously reported reexperiencing the trauma of the disaster were nine times as likely to report reexperiencing the disaster after Hurricane Sandy, indicating that those affected by previous disasters are uniquely vulnerable to the effects of the pandemic.

The stress induced by the coronavirus outbreak will require additional medical care. In primary care, pediatricians have designed interventions to build parenting skills and confidence in low-income families most likely to be affected by the pandemic. These interventions use video recordings and developmentally appropriate toys, books and resources to improve parent-child interactions and strengthen early development in infants, toddlers and preschoolers.

Programs have been built for school-age children to help them adapt and enhance their innate resiliency. We need a trauma-informed approach to care that cuts across all aspects of child and family care, as well as ages and stages of development. Just as we have spun pediatric wards into adult intensive care units on a dime, we need to adapt our health-care settings and schools to provide routine psychological screening to children after we return to normal.

Families can help, even while they are staying at home. Remember that children will observe adult behaviors and emotions for cues on managing their own emotions. Remind children that they can control much of what happens in their lives by practicing good hygiene and self-care, including getting plenty of quality sleep. Parents should also keep an open dialogue with their children about what they are seeing and hearing from peers, websites, apps and games.

As much as the early public health response to the pandemic has been criticized, we should ultimately judge the response to the pandemic on the strength of the support and compassion we give to those who survive it, especially our children. The capacity of the next generation to manage other disasters depends very much on our children rising from the challenges we face now and not simply surviving, but thriving and developing into their fullest potential.

Trasande is a professor of pediatrics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where he directs the NYU Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards.

Dreyer is a professor of pediatrics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where he directs the Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. He previously was president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

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The pandemic will haunt today's children forever, but we can help them now - Bryan-College Station Eagle

The novel coronavirus is unknown and rightly frightening. Like some terrible ghost, it seemingly defies all borders and boundaries.

Columns share an author's personal perspective and are often based on facts in the newspaper's reporting.

The novel coronavirus is unknown and rightly frightening. Like some terrible ghost, it seemingly defies all borders and boundaries. Many hoard toilet paper in the flimsy hopes of sopping up fears of helplessness. Others horrifyingly stock up on guns. Those on the more anxious side of the personality spectrum redouble efforts at meditation and breathing exercises. But just as scary as the COVID-19 virus itself is its unleashing of the worlds two oldest pestilences, irresponsible ignorance and its twin evil, scapegoating. We need, now more than ever, a double dose of the Enlightenment.

The era of Enlightenment advanced many values. On the one side were reason, rationality, and fine-tuning the individuals moral conscious against the sway of unfounded tradition. But the Age of Reason was hardly an emotionless machine. On the other side were compassion and humanism. Amid the current epidemic, both sides of The Enlightenment seem scarcer than a bottle of Purell in a Wal-Mart.

Consider the Oval Office. The current administration has abdicated its duty to promote what the Preamble to the US Constitution a great exemplar of the Enlightenment - calls the general Welfare. The president has set his illogical crosshairs on both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as well as the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In another stroke of willful recklessness, he jettisoned the National Security Councils Office of Global Health Security and Biodefense. Of equal folly was appointing the vice president as chair of the White House Coronavirus Task Force (which is more than 90% male). This medieval man lacks any background in medicine, science, or public health. He denies global warming and the connection between smoking and cancer, refused as governor of Indiana to address the AIDS epidemic, and attacks one of our most important and heroic healthcare organizations, Planned Parenthood, with the zeal of the Spanish Inquisition.

Moving from unscientific folly to intolerance, it hardly needs saying that there is no such thing as the Chinese Virus. So why would President Trump and his followers insist on using the slur? Most likely, to further his political platform of xenophobia. In times of crisis, its always easier to point the accusatory finger at someone else, preferably foreigners. Its a time-honored political tactic, fine-tuned especially by those who excel at demagoguery. But it has no basis in fact or scientific nomenclature, only in fear and prejudice.

Of course, the president has plenty of company in this bigotry, as the rising tide of racist tirades, assaults, and harassment against anybody who looks even remotely Asian amply attests. The FBI warned us as much only a few days ago. News media have amply documented instances of illegal hostility towards Orientals, a term that refers not to real people but to a stereotype wherein Hmong or Thai, Japanese or Indonesian American, it makes no difference, they are all some Typhoid Mary. CoughingWhileAsian is not just a twitter hashtag but a justifiable dread of extremist violence. The model minority, as many headlines proclaim, has rapidly turned into the yellow peril.

Jews, the original model minority, know this slipperiness well. Indeed, the coronavirus fright has also fomented resurgent anti-Semitism. In the eyes of many, were poisoning the wells all over again. Florida pastor Rick Wiles, who previously dubbed the impeachment effort a Jew coup, recently thundered that the Almighty is spreading the virus through synagogues because the Jews are guilty of deicide: Repent and believe and the plague will stop. (Perhaps he reads from the same hymnal as the Iranian regime?) One might dismiss the good pastor as a kook except that his news service, TruNews, has been granted press credentials by the White House.

Of course, the pandemic has also spawned no shortage of religious madness. The irrational fear of rationality also afflicts those who are themselves targets of bigotry. A few communities of ultra-Orthodox or Haredi Jews (as they prefer to be called) shun basic science as much as many fundamentalist Christians, mosques, and church leaders from Brazil to St. Petersburg. Too many clerics seem intent on shepherding their flock into the emergency ward. A few of the faithful may welcome a fast-track to heaven but those of us who know better prefer to hang on to our mortal coils just a little bit longer.

As a cultural anthropologist, I am fiercely and unapologetically dedicated to cultural diversity. Yet belief is no excuse for ignorance. That was a central tenet of the Enlightenment that we desperately need today. Religion often soothes angst. But devotion at the expense of science is a danger we hardly need today. And scapegoating, while a convenient way to avoid your own culpability in a situation run amok, always proves rather less convenient for the person just spat upon.

Theres nothing like a pandemic to expose the dangers of self-delusion and xenophobia. Neither hair shirts nor hurling invective were much use before the Enlightenment. They certainly are not now. We should have learned that lesson four centuries ago. Its not too late.

Eric Silverman, a former Research Professor of Anthropology, is a Senior Scholar at the international law firm McAllister Olivarius and affiliated with the Brandeis University Womens Studies Research Center.

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Column: COVID-19 and the Enlightenment - Opinion - MetroWest Daily News

Image Source: Scopio.

When we practice samatha and vipassanawell, practicing samatha and vipassana can be seamless; but they dont have to follow one another a series of events start to occur through practice:

1) Our concentration becomes unwavering,

2) We develop clarity and insight,

3) With the power of our focused concentration we might exhibit some special abilities. Personally, I develop a very strong sense of intuition; or bear a strong inkling towards an ambition that seemingly fosters greater good: well, specifically meaning, I get inspired to inspire others in mindfulness.

4) Our eternal and looming queries about everythingour lives, the universe etc.get answered automatically, or that we stop beating and haranguing ourselves to go seek out answers of questions that go in similar line.

5) We somehow develop wisdom and therefore courage.

6) I, for instance, constantly find myself mulling few questions: How are you coming to terms with your own life? What does it mean?

7) Your physical and mental sense of awareness heightens. They sharpen, so to speak.

We seek enlightenment through meditation. But what is enlightenment? Enlightenment is nothing; its understanding that there is no understanding; and its about understanding nothing and being nothing; its about going nowhere and being no one. Yet its about being alive and fullalive and full and breathing in/through this mortal body, through this mind, through the open, expansive, spacious, timeless, deathless and all-invincible mind, all the while remaining joyous and free. Enlightenment is about entertaining a sense of aliveness and fullness in and through ones mind and body and body and mind, understanding emptiness of it all (and understanding emptiness), and yet welcoming the concomitant fullness. That is what enlightenment is all about. Simply life. Simply life is simply enlightenment. Embrace life. Embrace Buddhas teaching on mindfulness meditation.

Finally, lets recap about the steps of vipassana meditation:

1) First, start by observing your breath.

2) Then start noting whatever arises nonjudgmentally and gently.

3) Then perform counting of your chosen object of meditationlike one, two for the inbreath and the outbreath.

4) Watch and observe your thoughts, emotions and discursions of your mind. Watch good thoughts; and watch bad thoughts. But do not get involved and engaged. Just watch. Observe. They are mere neural activities; those thoughts will disappear if you sit stillin body, in mind.

5) Consider difficultiesin meditation practice or in lifeas your teachers; those difficulties will help strengthen your skills in meditation. Alleviate obstructions in meditation like sleepiness, boredom and sluggishness. And how do you do that? You dispel difficulties in meditation by remembering that just the way its difficult to learn good and valuable skills, learning to meditate is not easy. It entails some effort on your part. You need to remain mindful and watchful: of your tendency to slip into laziness. You also need to check your own tendency to slip into negativity and pessimism.

6) In vipassana, you try to observe the non-self in you which is your awareness. It is timeless and empty, yet all-encompassing and all-powerful.

7) Let your meditation practiceor your breaththe in-breath and the out-breath guide you to work through any physical, emotional and mental pain: both in your present and your past.

8) Understand this: that your mind is expansive, open and already fulfilled. There is not even an iota of difficulty and anxiety there. Rest there. That is your abode. That is the practice of meditation: of vipassana.

9) Practicing vipassana meditation is also about practicing and understanding the nature of your mind. And the way your mind worked. Your mind is the seat of your happiness and pain.

10) When your mind is still, you can foster amazing power. You might develop the capacity to remember your past life, or your future life; you might see supernatural events like seeing visions of Buddha himself. But thatgaining such powersisnt the goal of meditation. Transcend such capacity or powers and try to be silent and calm.

11) Whatever arises in your consciousness, note them and label them. If you experience distraction, say distraction, if you notice overactivity of mind, say overactivity of mind, if you react with anger, say reacting with anger. With practice, you will be silent and your meditation practice will be better. Sometimes, it takes years of practice to arrive to this avenue. So, in the practice of vipassana meditation, note and label events from both your body and mind.

Vipassana meditation should come to you easy. Why? Because youre a human-and how rare and precious a human birth is!and you can acknowledge and understand your own life processes and your own motivations and inspirations, and you can observe and study the activities of your own mind; your own comings and goingsyoure in a way living a vipassana-inspired life when youre living mindfully alone (your mind is so powerful!). What do I mean? When you develop mindfulness, you develop openness and clarity; when you develop openness and clarity, you develop concentration and Insight.

When youre not thinking anything; when youre quiet and not exactly asleep and when youre also not meditating, your lifeyour entire lifewill flash right before your eyes. That is a vipassana moment: the non-thinking activelybut your life flashing right before your eyes .

This article was first published as a component of my online course on Udemy titled Principles and Practice of Mindfulness Leadership: Coaching Insights and Inspirations from Buddhism. Learn the actual practice of Mindfulness Meditation!

Visit link:
The Practice of Vipassana - Thrive Global

This is the fourth installment of our Home Movies column by Philippa Snow, about what we watch when no ones watching.

Watched this week: Enlightened (2011-13) | Mad Men (2007-15)

A few weeks before the lockdown, I began re-watching Mad Men for the second time, so that I reached the final episode somewhere around day five or six when things still felt unreal and spooky. I have always felt the last scene of the show, in which Don Draper meditates and ends up conjuring the 1971 Id Like to Give the World a Coke campaign, to be one of the ugliest, most nihilistic endings in the history of prestige television: the twinning of advertising with enlightenment, suggesting that there is no higher plane for the shows alcoholic ad-man than the one where he sells soda and Vicks VapoRub to mothers in the suburbs, is at best bleakly amusing, and at worst a total disavowal of any and all progress he has made in the preceding ninety hours. Mad Mens ending is the thing that tips it over into genius, a boldly downbeat period on the last page of a long, elegantly-crafted novel about mid-century media, and America, as meaningful as anything by Philip Roth or Thomas Pynchon.

Curiously, I noticed that a still of Draper meditating, dressed in white and looking without context like the very picture of enlightenment, kept reappearing in my Twitter feed in the days following my re-watch of the show. Evidently, Esquire had begun to use it in an article about the usefulness of meditation in the current crisis. The effect of seeing Drapers failure to connect with any higher power than capitalism used to illustrate a story about inner peace for a luxury magazine is twofold: the image is made both funnier and sadder by its placement. If we judge Don for his inability to clear his mind of advertising, his belief that even racial harmony and togetherness can be marketing tools, we can scarcely claim to be immune to the same pressures, particularly in the age of targeted advertisements and social media influencers. (So stop buying things, Don tells his hippy niece, facetiously, when she says advertising is pollution. They both know that the suggestion is rhetorical.)

HBOs Enlightened, a 2011 show about the stark impossibility of balancing a corporate life with spiritual ideals, is in some ways the antithesis of a long-running and universally respected show like Mad Men, canceled after just two seasons and still cult enough to feel like a discovery. The shows protagonist, a frazzled blonde named Amy Jellicoe, begins the pilot episode having a breakdown; after two months at a woo-woo health retreat, she returns to the world of work with a new outlook. There are warning signs that Amy might not be as placid or enlightened as she seems from the word go, the first sign being a bipolar diagnosis, and the second being the fact that Amy Jellicoe is played by Laura Dern. One of our foremost interpreters of middle-aged female madness, Dern is all tense smiles and frightening, clown-like tears. Where Hamms performance as Don Draper relied on a certain stoicism, the ability to frown without much troubling the perfection of his face, she is elastic to the point of possible derangement. David Lynch, I think, was right to campaign for an Oscar nomination for her work as somewhere between three and five characters in his 2007 magnum opus Inland Empire, even if he did not necessarily need to involve an actual cow: few actresses can split themselves with such alacrity, her light and shade brighter and gloomier than most.

This is either the blackest comedy to hit TV in a while, a review at Entertainment Weekly shrugged after Enlighteneds pilot aired, or the most pointlessly histrionic drama. It is possible that I was not supposed to cry as much or as consistently as I did while watching Enlightened, thinking about how painful it is to remain hopeful in a situation where hope feels ill-fitting or nave. It might be because for the last week I have been confined to bed with a mild case of COVID-19, feeling increasingly helpless; it might be because for all of Amys do-gooding and growth, the show does not forget that there is no real, lasting way to game the system. Amys affable ex-husband, Levi, is an addict who does not end up entirely redeemed by the last episode of season two; Amys father killed himself when she was in her early teens, and Amys mother has been distant and disinterested since. For a long stretch, she has no friends and many enemies, her personality abrasive enough to make her off-putting even after her epiphany. Still, she believes in goodness, a world in which it possible to overcome the terror of existence with sweet thoughts, kind words, wise deeds. How strange is this life, she murmurs, in the voiceover of season twos last episode, to be born into a body to certain uncertain parents, in this beautiful, upsetting world. It is hard not to think of Portia, in Shakespeares Merchant of Venice: How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

Portias line is most often remembered as referring to a weary world rather than to naughty one, perhaps because it is more palatable to imagine ourselves living in a world that is not wicked, but exhausted. Abbaddon, the health and beauty company that Amy works for, is for some reason named after the Hebrew word for the place of devastation, a detail that would be stupid if it did not somehow chime with the rest of the shows pitch-black, vaguely surrealist sensibility. A lot of placessandwich shops and baby showers, cheap motels and clubs and campsitesprove to be places of devastation for Enlighteneds heroine, her anger bubbling over at the dawning realization that half of the people in her life have behaved naughtily, and half are too exhausted by the relentlessness of their misery to care. Enlightened is, at its most desperate, galling, a reminder of the fact that those who seek to change things for the better are invariably fighting against currents nearly too strong to resist. By the finale, Amy has exposed the companys malpractice, and is likely to be sued for money that she does not have; her efforts to teach Abbaddon a lesson will not, in all likelihood, affect the many other companies committing the same crimes. You just have more hope than most people do, her former husband tells her. Its a beautiful thing to have a little hope for the world. It is beautiful, her optimism, in the way a dream is beautiful: difficult to hold on to in the unflattering, unforgiving light of day.

Then again, some people are simply more capable of staying optimistic than the rest of us. It turns out I was wrong about the meaning of the Mad Men ending, or at least about what its creator had intended to suggest with his appropriation of the happy, clappy Coke advertisement. In an interview in 2015, Matthew Weiner expressed a certain sadness at the idea that reviewers had interpreted the meditation scene as bleak, or existential. Its a little bit disturbing to me, that cynicism, he mused:

Im not saying advertisings not corny, but Im saying that the people who find that ad corny, theyre probably experiencing a lot of life that way, and theyre missing out on something The idea that someone in an enlightened state might have created something thats very pure that ad to me is the best ad ever made, and it comes from a very good place.

He remains at pains to point out that for nearly all of Mad Mens characters, life is a little better at the denouement than in the pilot. People reunite, end up promoted, form new businesses, get married, declare love. It is beautiful, but once again, beautiful in the manner of a dream: nothing is quite as settled as it first appears. Peggy has a new position, where she will no doubt encounter the same sexism as in her previous job; Pete, who might be an actual rapist, ends up back with his ex-wife. Betty is still alive, but knows that she will die within six months. We leave everybody slightly improved, Weiner told Variety. But isnt that exactly what all the best advertising doespromise us a new version of ourselves thats better, even if its only on the outer surface?

Link:
On Reawakening - thepointmag.com

Spoilers for 'The Midnight Gospel' Season 1

Netflix's latest animated offering 'The Midnight Gospel' surpasses anything and everything you have ever seen before. Created by Pendleton Ward (of 'Adventure Time' fame) and Duncan Trussell, 'The Midnight Gospel' is an extension of Trussell's very popular 'Duncan Trussell Family Hour' podcast, and a perfectly fitting one too.

Through eight episodes of varying lengths, the series launches an investigation into several topics ranging from drugs, death and enlightenment to meditation practices and life philosophies. Clancy, who is voiced by Trussell himself, is a spacecaster with a malfunctioning multiverse simulator that projects him into space to different planets and worlds from his home on something called the Chromatic Ribbon. In every new world, Clancy meets new beings and together they explore a plethora of subjects. These interviews are accompanied by mindblowing animation by Titmouse.

In his interview with Dr Drew Pinksy, they talk about drugs and meditation. With Anne Lamott and Raghu Markus, Clancy discusses death. He talks to Damien Echols about magic and enlightenment and explores forgiveness with Trudy Goodman. With Jason Louv, suffering, existentialism and rebirth are discussed.

It finally reaches more intense subjects such as death and the cycle of life. The series finale is a heartbreaking, emotionally powerful episode that features Trussell's late mother Deneen Fendig. Together they discuss the miracle of life, the suffering that existence brings to the human life and the detestable pain that death brings with it. The wondrous cycle of life has never before been portrayed with this ease and yet with such hard-hitting poise that it will bring you to tears.

Through eight episodes, Trussell explores subjects that have titillated a universal interest. But in the final episode, he gets extremely personal. Discussing the deep sorrow he felt after he lost his mother to cancer, Episode 8 titled 'Mouse of Silver' is an in-depth lesson into dealing with the loss of a beloved.

It is also evident that Clancy has been avoiding a lot of his problems through the season and refuses to confront them until Episode 6 'Vulture With Honour, where he is forced to face reality. The cycle of life and death is a continuous, ending process and one cannot escape it. But how do you get over the loss of someone, if at all you can?

Trussell's mother has a simple explanation "you cry," she says. It hurts, there is no doubt about that, but it doesn't always hurt and eventually, the hurt also dissipates. Why? Because underneath the hurt and the pain, you discover what you are feeling is love. And like his mother says, that kind of love never goes away.

The episode is so beautifully made that it will break you and reduce you to tears. And just that like, his mother leaves him sucked into a black hole that has no known beyond.

By now, the magistrate's police have reached Clancy's simulator. Earlier in the series, he received a warning from a fellow spacecaster about the law catching up with him for Clancy's work. And now, in the finale, they are finally here. As the police get closer, Clancy is still inside the simulator filled with grief over his latest interview. The cops begin destroying the simulator, eventually dying in the process themselves a massive explosion reduces everything to nothing.

A second-long blackout later, Clancy along with his trusted dog Charlotte is picked up in a bus. Inside, there is every one that Clancy had interviewed through the series and died. He asks his neighbor if he is dead, only to get the response, "Just be here now." And off goes the bus on a hypnotic path.

So is Clancy really dead? Will we get a Season 2?

We do not know yet. In fact, we cannot even predict if there is anything beyond for him. One of the things the series conveys is that it is important to live in the moment. We can only hope to see more of the visual masterpiece that is 'The Midnight Gospel', until then, do not mind us. We are going to rewatch this a couple of times.

All episodes of 'The Midnight Gospel' are currently streaming on Netflix.

Go here to see the original:
'The Midnight Gospel' Season 1: Heartbreaking finale will hit you hard and leave you hungry for Season 2 - MEAWW