There was a free public forum at Clove & Clive last Saturday night on the topic Forgiveness - Path to Liberation. It was very interesting and the questions and discussion that followed were lively and exciting.

Forgiveness is about letting go of the hold that an old injury had over us. Holding on to old memories and pain harms us physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Forgiveness is always for the injured, not the injurer. Forgiveness allows the injured to heal.

Studies have showed that people who forgive reduces their anxiety, pain, depression and even some physical symptoms such as backache and arthritis. They experienced an increased in energy, vitality, optimism about life and increased physical and emotional well being. In contrast, an unforgiving heart prolonged the pain from an injury that was long gone. It perpetuates the state of stress in the body, with increased anxiety, worry, depression and pessimism. It also increases the risk of a heart attack, gastric ulcer, skin eruptions, arthritis, neck and backache. Generally, it decreases the quality of life for the unforgiving heart.

Knowing this, doesn’t it make sense to forgive?

A new study has found the link between sleep and memory. Good sleep boosts your ability to learn and retain memory. Apparently, adequate sleep is necessary for you to assimilate and hard-wired new tasks that you have learned and harden your memory so that it does not fade away easily.

So if you are facing some problem with learning or remembering, make sure you get enough quality sleep. Then observe and see if you learn and remember better. You might be surprised by the results.

However, the study is still in its preliminary stage. It has not determined how many hours is necessary for a good sleep yet. More needs to be done.

For the full story, click here.

Some of us have had the good fortune of meeting up with highly accomplished spiritual masters who are always serene and happy. Most time, we can also find one or two ordinary-looking people among our midst who always seem to glow with peace and serenity. These are usually people who have lived a simple life based on universal spiritual values of love and compassion.

They all have something in common - symptoms of inner peace. Below are some of these symptoms.

Symptoms of Inner Peace

1. Tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears based on past experiences.

2. An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.

3. Loss of interest in judging self.

4. Loss of interest in judging other people.

5. Loss of interest in conflicts.

6. Loss of interest in interpreting actions of others.

7. Loss of ability to worry (this is a very serious symptom).

8. Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.

9. Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.

10. Frequent attacks of smiling through the eyes of the heart.

11. Increasing susceptibility to love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.

12. Increasing tendency to let things happen rather than to make them happen.

To the lay people, some of these symptoms may even seem alarming, but when one takes a deeper look at them, one will eventually see the wisdom arising from them.

How to Stay Well (or Get Better, If You’re Not So Well To Begin With)

If these symptoms appeal to you, here are what you can do to achieve your own inner peace.

1. Do things that bring you a sense of fulfillment, joy and purpose, that validate your worth as a human being. See your life as your own creation, and strive to make it a positive one.

2. Pay close and loving attention to yourself, tuning in to your needs on all levels. Take care of yourself, nourishing, supporting, and encouraging yourself.

3. Release all negative emotions - resentment, envy, fear, sadness, anger. Express your feelings appropriately; don’t hold on to them. Forgive yourself. Forgive others too.

4. Hold positive images and goals in your mind, pictures of what you truly want in your life. When fearful images arise, re-focus on images that evoke feelings of peace and joy.

5. Love yourself, and love everyone else. Make loving the purpose and primary expression in your life.

6. Create love, loving, honest relationships, allowing for the expression and fulfillment of needs for intimacy and security. Try to heal any wounds in past relationships, as with old lovers, mother, father and siblings.

7. Make a positive contribution to your community, through some form of work or service that you value and enjoy.

8. Make a commitment to health and well-being, and develop a healing programme, drawing on the support and advice of experts without becoming enslaved to them.

9. Accept yourself and everything in your life as an opportunity for growth and learning. Be grateful. When you mess up your life, forgive yourself, learn what you can from the experience, and then move on.

10. Keep a sense of humour.

Our immune system plays an essential role in our fight against cancer.

In most instances, our body mount an attack against cancer cells by producing immune cells that can fight these mutated cancer cells. However, the amount of these immune cells are too small to be effective. What happens if we could increase these cancer fighting cells?

In a recent experiment, scientists remove these immune cells from a patient suffering from advanced melanoma, a type of skin cancer, and cloned them in the billions before infusing them back into the patient.

The result?

The cancer disappeared after two months and the patient is still cancer free after two years.

However, the scientists involved are quick to caution that this method is only practical for certain types of cancer, and may not work for all.

For full report , click here.

If you have a gay brother or a lesbian sister, how would you react?

Many people have had the dilemma of confronting this gay issue in the family. As society becomes more open and accepting, gays and lesbians who were once living their lives secretly are now openly declaring their sexual preferences. This means families of gays and lesbians will have to confront this issue head-on.

A recent study on the brain of gay men and lesbian women may help shed some light onto the issue. The study shows that gay men have brain similar to straight women and lesbian women have brain similar to straight men, which may explain their sexual preference.

A notable comment in this study is that whatever changes in the brain may have happened very much earlier, either while in the womb or in early infancy. This would contradict the belief that gay men and lesbian women were somehow conditioned to lean towards same sex partners by their environment. Rather, their preference may have been inborn.

For the full report, click here.

A 10 year old boy had an “incident” at the pool he was swimming in, was able to walked home with his mom, chatted with her, then felt tired and went to sleep, and died in his sleep.

Doctors determined that the boy had died of drowning because of water in his lungs.

Apparently the boy had inhaled water into his lungs while playing and swimming at the pool but did not appear to have difficulty in breathing at the time. However, he soon complained of extreme tiredness and went to sleep and never woke up.

“Dry drowning”, as this case is classified under, is an extremely rare presentation of drowning. In most cases of drowning, the victim immediately suffers from difficulty in breathing due to the lack of oxygen being absorbed through the lungs to the blood stream. In dry drowning, this difficulty in breathing is not obvious. Instead, the rarer symptoms of extreme tiredness or change in behaviour - also indicating lack of oxygen to the brain - is experienced later. The fact that the 10 year old boy “soiled” himself should alert us to this sudden change in behaviour.

If diagnosed early, oxygen can be forcefully pumped into the lungs to allow oxygen to seep through to the blood stream, giving the lungs time to recover.

For the full report regarding this strange but true story, click here.

Resveratrol is a chemical that is found in red wine. Recent studies have shown that it may contain powerful anti-aging properties.

One study noted that people taking red wine tend to stay healthy despite taking questionable diets. In addition, certain aging processes that comes with old age can be slowed down by resveratrol.

This finding has triggered quite an interest in the commercial viability of resveratrol.

For a full story, click here.

A recent study shows that mediterranean diet that is rich in fruits and vegetables, cooked in olive oil, may prevent Type 2 Diabetes by up to 83%. The finding is, however, from just a preliminary study as more studies need to be done with larger groups of people.

The finding is not surprising as olive oil is already known to help reduce blood sugar and lower blood pressure.

For the full report on this study, go here.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) of USA recommends that people above 60 years of age be given the vaccine against shingles. It is estimated that the vaccine can reduce the risk of shingles in those above 60 by 50%.

Shingles present as vesicular rashes on the body, usually along the path of a nerve. It happens in those who had a history of chicken pox when the chicken pox virus, varicella zoster, does not get totally eliminated. Instead, the virus continues to survive in the nervous system. When the patient becomes depressed immunely, usually as a result of old age or certain diseases, it appears as shingles.

For more on this story, click here.

A recent study has found that vitamin D deficiency in breast cancer patients increases the risk of metastasis. Apparently, breast cancer patients with vitamin D deficiency has a 94% risk of spread and a 73% risk of death compared to those without the deficiency. Moreover, researchers found that more than 75% of patients with breast cancer have vitamin D deficiency at the time of diagnosis.

These findings may lead to a new look at the role vitamin D plays in the development and/or prevention of breast cancer.

For the full report on this story, click here.