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Do you feel good when you go to church ?  I'm not talking about dropping the guilt for all the times you don't, but a true, down deep feeling of peace? That's your brain rewarding you, according to newswise.com. A new study has found that religious and spiritual experiences activate the brain reward circuits in much the same way as love, sex, gambling, drugs and music, report researchers at the University of Utah School of Medicine . “We’re just beginning to understand how the brain participates in experiences that believers interpret as spiritual, divine or transcendent,” says senior author and neuroradiologist Jeff Anderson, M.D., Ph.D. “In the last few years, brain imaging technologies have matured in ways that are letting us approach questions that have been around for millennia.” Specifically, the investigators set out to determine which brain networks are involved in representing spiritual feelings in one group, devout Mormons, by creating an environ...

Who hasn't heard "where there's a will, there's a way"? Usually when someone wants you to do something you don't.   Save $100 every month from your paycheck (my husband).   Lose that 10 pounds.  Tell your partner you'll be home on time -- even though you never are (again, my husband). Now a study is saying there’s more than one way to gain a sense of control over your life, according to new research from Johns Hopkins University, as reported by newswise.com. The traditional view of a life in control is one in which an individual has taken actions to ensure success in both the near and long terms, says study author Erik G. Helzer, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School . This is “primary control” ― the attempt to win mastery by striving for goals and asserting one’s will upon circumstances. But, Helzer argues in a recently published paper, another method, “secondary control,” has been given short shrift in both the sc...

According to an op-ed in The New York Times' Sunday Review today, people who go regularly to church live longer. It's not just good for your soul.  It's good for your health. Maybe it's because I go to church every week (and teach Sunday school to rowdy eight-year-olds), but it was exciting to hear that you can add as much as three years to your life, T.M. Luhrmann writes in his op-ed, by attending a religious service often. No one's quite sure why, Luhrmann reports, and it's quite possible it's the social network, the community, it inspires, and activates.  I'm pretty much a loner but when I had cancer surgery six years ago, it helped me to know that I was being prayed for, by a lot of people, some I didn't even know, and I'm convinced that's one of the things that helped me heal faster. But it's not just that.  Back when I was newly living with my boyfriend (now my husband), I made a good friend with an adorable toddler nickname...

Christmas, and Newtown.  Here is how I have come to peace with it. http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/default/article/Op-Ed-Taking-strength-from-a-father-s-grace-4135853.php