Skip to content Skip to sidebar Skip to footer

Meditation

Meditation

Consciousness is not a thing….

....but a process of inference. I have a confession. As a physicist and psychiatrist, I find it difficult to engage with conversations about consciousness. My biggest gripe is that the philosophers and cognitive scientists who tend to pose the questions often assume that the mind is a thing, whose existence can be identified by the…

Read more

Have a nice trip

A psychedelic experience can be deeply rewarding, but also carries real risks. Here’s how to avoid a bad trip. Humans have consumed substances with consciousness-altering properties for millennia. Traditional societies used them in healing rituals, initiation ceremonies and to make contact with the gods and the dead, among other practices. Today they are…

Read more

Hang out in Japanese neighbourhoods

Did you know that Japan’s shrines and temples welcome regular tourists to stay for a night or more? Experience authentic Zen meditation, the traditional, vegetarian cuisine called shojin ryori, and explore a fascinating world so different from anything you know. Staying at a shrine or temple is an experience that even a lot of Japanese people don’t get to have that easily, a…

Read more

Modest mosque

Centrally located in the Iranian capital Tehran, the Vali-e-Asr Mosque’s most distinguishing aspect is the fact that it does not look like a mosque. Designed by Iranian architects Reza Daneshmir and Catherine Spiridonoff of Fluid Motion Architects, the building eschews the stereotypical typology of large domes and tall minarets in favour of a modest horizontality…

Read more

Stay at a traditional Japanese house

It had been a packed afternoon of exploring the charming city of Tamba Sasayama, where the vibrant energy of young businesses ran hot through the city. But it was also a relentlessly cold and rainy day. so I was already fantasizing about hot baths and steaming hot pots when we arrived at the 100-year-old traditional Japanese house.…

Read more

Let’s rock!

Rock art, that is paintings and carvings on natural rock formations, is one of the earliest forms of creative expression and a universal phenomenon among prehistoric societies, in this case, Indian. An instrument of communication rather than simply art, it is an assemblage of material culture which provides a glimpse into the lives of people…

Read more

Déjà vu, all over again

A brain glitch? A sign of quantum entanglement? What science says about déjà vu. Roughly two-thirds of people have had déjà vu, or the weird feeling that a new situation has been experienced before. Yet its prevalence belies just how mysterious the phenomenon remains to researchers, despite some extraordinary recent leaps in neuroscience. In part,…

Read more

Mexico-go-go!

Mexico is as vast as it is diverse. Its 761,600 square miles of land range from arid coastal regions in the west to verdant Rousseau-esque jungles in the south. Long known for its cultural roots in plant medicines and healing temazcal (or sweat lodge) ceremonies, Mexico has always been a wellness haven—a place of ritualized…

Read more