Small gestures can go a long way toward creating a closer relationship.

You know that maintaining intimacy is important for your relationship with your partner. But did you know that it’s also good for your health?

Psychologists and researchers have discovered a number of benefits for people who experience intimacy in their committed relationships. In fact, closeness in relationships has been found to influence social, emotional, and physical health.

People in intimate relationships…

* Are better at successful navigating various developmental stages
* Are more likely to maintain solid, lasting friendships
* Are less likely to be in car accidents
* Are more resistant to diseases and mental illness

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Time (and space) does not exist independently of the life that notices it.

Although highly technical and highly controversial, a “new” theory of everything concludes that “the universe is created by life and not the other way around.” And the theory is getting some pretty good press.

If Lanza’s theory holds true (we’ll probably never know because his theory is as impossible to prove or disprove as is String Theory – just makes a whole lot more sense considering the evidence), then what you think and believe really does have a significant impact on hard reality.

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During the 1980s, then President Ronald Reagan often chastised the then Communist government of the Soviet Union for having such a high number of prison inmates in proportion to their general population. Now that the Soviet “yoke” has been removed, Russia has greatly reduced its ratio of prisoners per capita. Although they still rank second world-wide, I applaud their efforts at reforming their penal system and laws.

The United States, in the meantime has caught up and surpassed the old Soviet Union for ratio of prisoners to general population. The USA, the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave now houses more prisoner per capita than any other nation on earth – at 715 per 100,000 the US holds more than the old USSR (NationMaster.com) and almost twice as many as second ranked Russia.

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Some years ago, my wife and I were invited to do a fire walk. We built a BIG fire – over 8 feet tall and 20 feet across we stacked the wood – then burned it down to a 15 foot round bed of hot coals. It was so hot in fact that we burned our faces from several feet back.

Sure it’s possible to walk on coals – lots of people have done it before and not gotten so much as an ouch of a burn. But I had not done it before – and even after the first person walked across – and even though we knew scientifically and spiritually that it was possible – the HEAT and FIRE coupled with our own past experiences with fire – I had been burned badly on my feet in a fire in the garage in our old house – confronted us with the real possibility of serious injury.

FIRE BURNS FLESH!!! My body knows it – which is why I don’t put my hand on the hot stove on purpose. My body knows about heat and knows how to react to it – mostly by AVOIDING IT.

I don’t care how much you believe you can do it – when you stand at the precipice and your face and arms are burning from the heat – you are face to face with one of the greatest inbred fears of animal-kind – the fear of fire – ala Frankenstein’s monster. All animals are afraid of fire – including humans. Fire is TERRIFYING.

What would it take to make me step from the cool grass onto the superheated hot coals?

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Beta and delta brain waves were always present to some degree during wakefulness.

A study published in Neuron, helps us understand the value of delta and beta brain waves in a new way. Basically, the study showed that beta brain waves denote attention and attentiveness while the much slower delta brain waves tell us when to pay attention. It makes sense that we don’t pay attention to everything all the time – we’d be overwhelmed. Some mechanism within us figures out the patterns of attention we need to employ in order to better utilize our attentive powers. Timing is everything…

Through a series of experiments utilizing a brain-computer interface, the study authors discovered that beta and delta brain waves were always present to some degree during wakefulness. The frequency and intensity of the delta wave helped the authors predict when attention would be paid while the frequency and intensity of the beta wave helped them predict how attentive the subject would be at any given time. Fundamentally, this demonstrates that our brains are always bathed in delta AND beta waves during times of outward attention such as when noticing something important or just paying attention to something. The study did not investigate sleep states.

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