Therapy Living, PLLC

01/26/2026

Standing barefoot on a pile of Epsom or Sea Salt, provides a range of sensory and physiological benefits that contribute to an incredible feeling of well-being and actually provides some muscle and skin benefits as well, making most people feel as relaxed and recharged as just returning from an incredible two week vacation. The primary reasons for this sensation include:

🗂️Reflexive Nerve Stimulation: The uneven texture of salt crystals acts similarly to varied natural terrain like pebbles or sand.

📑Sensory Activation: Walking or standing on these crystals stimulates nerve endings in the soles of the feet, sending intense sensory stimuli to the brain.

📑Muscular Engagement: This unstable surface forces the engagement of deep stabilization muscles in the feet, calves and glutes, which can strengthen the foot’s arch and improve overall posture.

🗂️Grounding (Earthing) Effects: Direct skin contact with natural surfaces like salt is part of the “grounding” or “earthing” practice.

📑Electrical Balance: The body absorbs negative ions (free electrons) from the earth’s surface, which help neutralize free radicals and reduce inflammation. Exposure to these ions can also increase serotonin levels in the brain, fostering feelings of happiness and deep relaxation.

📑Nervous System Regulation: Grounding is associated with shifting the autonomic nervous system from “fight-or-flight” (sympathetic) to a “relax and digest” (parasympathetic) state, which can lower stress, improve sleep and reduce anxiety.

🗂️Skin and Muscle Benefits:

📑Exfoliation and Detox: The coarse texture of dry salt gently exfoliates dead skin, while its antimicrobial properties help cleanse the skin of bacteria.

📑Anti-Inflammatory: Salt can draw out excess moisture from swollen tissues through osmosis, reducing inflammation and easing sore and painful foot muscles.

01/25/2026

Roughhousing looks chaotic to adults, but to a child’s brain it is structured learning. Psychological research shows that playful physical interaction is essential for healthy emotional and social development during early childhood.

When children wrestle, chase, and tumble in safe settings, they learn how to regulate force, read social cues, and stop when someone signals discomfort. This teaches self control empathy and boundaries in ways words alone cannot.

Children who are never allowed to horseplay miss critical lessons about power and restraint. Without this practice, the brain has fewer opportunities to learn how to manage strong impulses safely. Research links the absence of rough play with higher levels of aggressive behavior later in life.

Roughhousing also strengthens emotional regulation. During physical play, stress rises and falls naturally. The nervous system practices excitement without losing control. This builds resilience and improves impulse management as children grow.

Parents do not need to fear rough play. When guided with clear limits and supervision, it becomes one of the most effective tools for teaching cooperation respect and emotional balance. Healthy roughhousing is not about chaos. It is about wiring the brain to handle strength responsibly.

01/25/2026

Stress Makes You Sick 🙂

01/24/2026

Placing an ice pack under your armpit calms sudden anxiety by activating the parasympathetic nervous system (rest-and-digest) via vagus nerve stimulation, which slows heart rate and blood pressure, interrupting the fight-or-flight response, and the intense cold provides a grounding distraction, redirecting focus from anxious thoughts to physical sensation, helping you regain calm.

🗂️How it Works:

📑Vagus Nerve Activation: The armpit contains major blood vessels and nerves, including the vagus nerve, a key part of the parasympathetic system. Cold exposure stimulates this nerve.

📑Parasympathetic Response: Activating the vagus nerve signals the body to relax, slowing down your heart rate, reducing blood pressure, and decreasing overall arousal.

📑Interrupt Fight-or-Flight: This counteracts the sympathetic nervous system’s “fight-or-flight” mode, which triggers anxiety.

📑Grounding Distraction: The intense cold grabs your attention, interrupting anxious thoughts and physically grounding you in the present moment, making it harder to focus on panic.

See PMID: 30684416

01/24/2026

01/24/2026

Your brain on prayer might actually look different. 🧠

New research suggests that consistent prayer and contemplative practices can lead to measurable changes in both brain function and structure.

Here's what the science shows:

When people engage in regular prayer, studies observe increased activity in the frontal lobes. These are the brain regions responsible for focused attention, emotional regulation, and decision-making. Think of it like a mental workout. 💪

Just as lifting weights strengthens muscle over time, repeatedly directing your focus and engaging in self-reflection may strengthen the neural circuits in these areas. With long-term practice, researchers have even observed structural adaptations, including increased thickness in the prefrontal cortex. This is neuroplasticity in action.

Some studies have also found that certain types of prayer activate the brain's reward systems, which may help explain why many people find these practices so meaningful and sustainable.

The key factor isn't a specific technique or duration per session.

Research suggests it's the consistency over time that matters most. Daily practice over weeks, months, or years appears to be what drives these changes. 📿

Important context:

This research supports the idea that contemplative practices can be part of a healthy lifestyle, but results vary by individual. Prayer is not a replacement for medical treatment or professional mental health care. 🌿

Whether you pray, meditate, or engage in other reflective practices, you may be doing more for your brain than you realize. ✨

Sources: Ho et al., Neural correlates meta-analysis (2025)

01/24/2026

Children who sleep near parents often show better stress recovery, emotional regulation, and lower anxiety because the consistent physical closeness provides a powerful sense of safety, calms the developing nervous system, supports secure attachment, and helps build neural pathways for resilience, making the child’s brain learn to manage stress more effectively through cues like heartbeat and breathing. This practice reinforces the belief that comfort is always available, reducing fear and promoting overall emotional stability and trust.

🗂️Key Mechanisms at Play:

📑Nervous System Regulation: Parental presence, warmth, and rhythmic breathing act as external stabilizers for a baby’s still-developing nervous system, keeping heart rate steady and cortisol levels lower.

📑Secure Attachment: Repeated exercises of comfort and security during vulnerable nighttime hours build trust and a strong, secure attachment, a foundation for confidence and healthy bonds.

📑Calming Stress Response: The proximity teaches the brain that challenges are manageable, leading to faster stress recovery (lower cortisol) and less hypervigilance.

📑Neural Pathway Development: This closeness strengthens connections between the prefrontal cortex (emotion control) and the amygdala (fear response), helping children respond to stress with balanced reactions rather than overreactions.

📑Reduced Baseline Anxiety: Feeling safe and soothed consistently throughout the night creates a “safety blueprint” in the brain, lowering overall anxiety levels and fear responses.

🗂️Benefits for Development:

📑Better Emotional Balance: A calm nervous system supports steadier emotional rhythms during the day, leading to fewer meltdowns.

📑Enhanced Coping Skills: Children learn that comfort is available, building confidence in their ability to handle challenges.

📑Stronger Resilience: Early nurturing interactions shape future emotional health, providing tools for managing stress later in life.

SEE PMID: 38351212, 33988085, 32946284, 38837802

PMID:

01/24/2026

Children under age 4 who miss naps experience intense stress primarily due to a biological “fight-or-flight” response that occurs when they exceed their optional wake window.

🗂️Biological Stress: When a young child stays awake too long, their body interprets the lack of sleep as a need to stay alert in a potentially dangerous situation. This triggers a surge of stress hormones:

📑 Cortisol and Adrenaline: These “fatigue-fighting” hormones are released to keep the child alert, but they act as stimulants similar to caffeine.

📑Inhibiting Melatonin: High cortisol levels block the production of melatonin, the hormone needed to relax and fall asleep, making it paradoxically harder for an exhausted child to rest.

📑The “Second-Wind”: This hormonal surge can cause a child to appear hyperactive or “silly” right before a sudden emotional crash.

🗂️Loss of Emotional Regulation: Children under age 4 have “immature” brains that are still developing the ability to manage feelings. Missing a nap “taxes” these developing emotional centers in several ways:

📑Increased Reactivity: Nap-derived toddlers react significantly more negatively to small frustrations and less positively to happy events.

📑Reduced Resilience: Research shows that missing just one 90 minute nap can make toddlers 39% less curious and less able to adapt to new challenges.

📑The “Volcano Effect”: Without a mid-day “reset” to regroup and repair, homeostatic sleep pressure builds throughout the day until it erupts into uncontrollable tantrums or crying spells.

SEE PMID: 26116959

📑

01/20/2026

01/18/2026

An explanation for your life choices

Immediate replies to messages or calls

Access to your time, energy, or personal space

Agreement just to keep the peace

Justification for prioritizing your mental health

Your availability outside work hours

A relationship that drains you

Conformity to societal timelines (marriage, kids, career pace)

Financial help at the cost of your stability

Forgiveness without accountability

Sharing personal details you’re not comfortable with

Perfection or constant productivity

Loyalty to people who repeatedly disrespect boundaries

An apology when you are not at fault

Access to your private life on social media

Emotional labor for people who refuse to self-reflect

Participation in conversations that make you uncomfortable

A response to unsolicited advice or opinions

Guilt for choosing rest over hustle

Proof of your worth through achievements or milestones

01/17/2026

Fascinating research out of the University of Washington successfully replicates a direct brain-to-brain connection between multiple pairs of people in a scientific study, following-up on the teams initial demonstration.

The study involved six people who were engaged with each other in pairs from different areas of campus. Researchers sent signals from one person’s brain over the internet to another person in an attempt to control the other’s hand motions with thought.

Study Method
In order to properly conduct the study researchers needed to separate the subjects and close off certain perceptions of the study method. Each sender of thought was placed in front of a computer game where he or she had to defend a city by firing a cannon and intercepting rockets launched by a pirate ship. But, the senders were not able to interact with the game physically. The only way they could properly defend their city was through thought. When a rocket was coming or when they wanted to fire a cannon, they had to think about doing that intentionally.

Across campus, each receiver sat in a dark room with headphones on and no ability to see the computer game. Their right hand was positioned overtop the touchpad that would fire the cannon when tapped. If brain-to-brain connection was successful between the two pairs, the send would effectively be able to get the receiver to tap the touchpad and fire the cannon.

From a technology standpoint, researchers used two types of noninvasive instruments that can connect with human brains in real-time. One participant was hooked up to a electroencephalography machine that reads brain activity and sends electrical pulses via the web to the receiver. The receiver is wearing a swim cap with a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil placed near the area of the brain that controls hand movements.

This setup effectively allows one person to send a command that would in theory move the hand of another person simply through thought.

“The new study brings our brain-to-brain interfacing paradigm from an initial demonstration to something that is closer to a deliverable technology,” said co-author Andrea Stocco, a research assistant professor of psychology and a researcher at UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. “Now we have replicated our methods and know that they can work reliably with walk-in participants.”

The Results
It was found that accuracy varied depending on each pairing. The accuracy range was from 25 to 83 percent. Misses were mostly found to be caused by the sender failing to accurately execute the thought to send the “fire” command. The researchers also were able to quantify the exact amount of information that was transferred between the two brains.

Interestingly the degree of accuracy being low in subjects who couldn’t properly extend intention to the receiver also indicates that it isn’y simply just thoughts that affect our reality but actually the intention. Therefore during study of the phenomenon accuracy in whether or not subjects are truly intending vs just thinking is crucial.

For me personally, this brings interesting insight to my theory that thoughts don’t create reality, but that there needs to be a power behind that thought. A strong intention, emotion, feeling, etc. Further to that, it takes deep practice and a level of mastery to truly train yourself to impact physical reality with thought and intention.

This isn’t the first time brain-to-brain communication has been demonstrated scientifically. Another research team from the company Starlab in Barcelona, Spain, recently published a study with very similar results to the one above. Direct communication between two human brains was demonstrated but this one only featured two subjects.

Also, a study was done that demonstrated telepathy between humans during dreams.

The research team from the University of Washington has been granted a new $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation so they can take their work to the next level. This clearly illustrates the validity and impressive potential implications of their work.

“Imagine someone who’s a brilliant scientist but not a brilliant teacher. Complex knowledge is hard to explain – we’re limited by language,” said co-author Chantel Prat, a faculty member at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences and a UW assistant professor of psychology.

Keeping An Open Mind
It feels like we are living in a time where new discoveries are truly making us question what it means to e human. Who are we? What are our capabilities? If the story of who we truly are changes, would that change how we choose to create our society and life?

Thankfully there are many brilliant people out there not only doing this work to bring forth cutting edge science. Of course this new science does come with opposition and controversy as paradigms are challenged by these ideas. It’s my feeling that there is little value in simply calling this work “pseudoscience” as it often is called, as it only seeks to cast off this work without truly looking into it and remembering to stay curious and playful.

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” – Nikola Tesla