"Those who do not have the power over the story that dominates their lives - the power to retell it, reexperience it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change - truly are powerless because they cannot think new thoughts"   Salman Rushdie 

I read a lot of research. When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database -

It is clear that there is a U-shaped association between sleep duration and mortality, with both short and long sleep linked with increased death rates.  This finding is underlined by two major recent research overviews - Gallicchio & Kalesan "Sleep duration and mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis" and Cappuccio et al's "Sleep duration and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies".  There is so much interesting that one could write about this, but this particular blog post is triggered by a personal query that I have.  I try hard - and am mostly successful - to have a very healthy lifestyle.  I eat well, exercise well, keep a sensible weight, don't smoke, don't d

Last week I wrote about "Using Williams & Penman's book ... as a self-help resource (3rd post) - first week's practice".  It's time now to move on to the second week's practice described in chapter six - "Keeping the body in mind".

Time to roll up our sleeves and start turning Williams & Penman's book's "meditation recipes" into genuinely nourishing meals.  I have already written a first blog post on why we have good reason to be optimistic about the benefits we can achieve with this kind of self-help venture.  The second post encouraged us to get ready for the mindfulness practice.  We are now at chapter five in the book - "Mindfulness week one: waking up to the autopilot".