The Self-Heal Touch Wellness Center

11/15/2025

If only all grocery stores did this…

h/t Mamavation

11/03/2025

We already knew this. It's often the case that they acknowledge reality decades after the healers talk about it.

Brain scans reveal depression isn’t just a chemical imbalance

For years the world was told depression comes from “low serotonin.” A simple chemical switch in the brain. But new brain imaging research is rewriting the story. Scientists are now seeing depression not as one broken molecule but as a complex shift in brain circuits emotions stress response systems and even inflammation. The brain is not just missing a chemical. It is struggling to process the world.

Modern scans show changes in how brain regions talk to each other. Circuits tied to emotion memory and motivation can go quiet or misfire. Chronic stress can physically reshape neural pathways. Trauma can leave fingerprints deep in the mind. Depression is not a flaw in your personality and it is not a single chemical error. It is the brain adapting to pain overload stress and life experiences in ways we are only beginning to understand.

This changes something important. If depression is complex healing can be too. Medication may still help but it is not the only answer. Therapy lifestyle shifts purpose social support and trauma work all matter. You are not broken and you are not simple. Your brain is powerful and layered and every pathway that changed can be rebuilt in time.

Science is catching up to something people with depression always knew. It is real it is deep and it deserves understanding not blame.

10/31/2025

10/22/2025

"If you come to my home in France in the month of April, you won’t see any sunflowers. Yet the farmers have already planted the sunflower seeds. They’ve put manure and compost in the soil, and everything is ready. In early June, the stems will already have grown one or two feet tall, and within a month the sunflowers will be blooming everywhere. Our practice is to cultivate good seeds in the soil of our mind, knowing that they will mature and bloom in their own time. If we look deeply enough, we can already see the sunflowers in April."
-Thich Nhat Hanh (At Home in the World)

Photo: Thich Nhat Hanh in south-west France, early 1980s.

09/08/2025

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1342066857705645&id=100057070315212

Between 1958 and 1962, American scientist John Calhoun conducted one of history’s most unsettling experiments—“Universe 25,” a mouse utopia that became a nightmare.

He built a perfect haven for rats: unlimited food, constant water, and safe shelter. At first, the colony thrived. But by day 317, population growth stalled, and darker currents began to stir.

As numbers swelled past 600, chaos spread. Dominant males turned violent, females attacked each other, and reproduction slowed to a halt. Juvenile survival dropped to zero, while passive, immaculate “beautiful mice” withdrew into isolation, avoiding courtship and conflict alike.

Eventually, the colony spiraled into cannibalism, social collapse, and extinction. Calhoun repeated the experiment 25 times, always with the same grim end. His work remains a chilling mirror for human society—a warning that even abundance cannot save us if connection, purpose, and balance are lost.


~ The Two Pennies

08/29/2025