“Growing up, my girlfriends couldn’t wait to hit the shopping malls and go to parties, the bigger the better–but I didn’t share their excitement. I always felt overwhelmed, exhausted around large groups of people, though I was clueless why. “What’s the matter with you?” friends would say, shooting me the weirdest looks. All I knew was that crowded places and I just didn’t mix. I’d go there feeling just fine but leave nervous, depressed, or with some horrible new ache or pain. Unsuspectingly, I was a gigantic sponge, absorbing the emotions of people around me.”

This month brings us the summer solstice, a podcast with Dr. Amit Goswami, many new articles from Merlian News including Dr. Judith Orloff, as well as another new website of the month! Book reviews include authors Duane Elgin, Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway, Roland M. Comtois, and Dr. John Lerma.

Dr. Vijaya Nair , founder of JIVA Supplements, has spent years of research finding support for the newly accepted theory that most diseases, such as diabetes and high blood pressure, have a root cause in common: chronic inflammation. The body creates an inflammatory response when it encounters toxins in our environment, anxiety, illnesses or other stressors. This inflammation then causes disease.

In this article, we learn about Dr. Frank Lipman and the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center. While practicing western medicine, Dr. Lipman became more and more aware of both the weaknesses and strengths of his training. He then began to study acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, nutrition, Herbal Medicine, biofeedback, meditation and yoga.

“Acclaimed channel and author Roland Comtois has spent a lifetime channeling life-altering spiritual messages to people of all faiths. Now he has channeled his heavenly energy into his new book, And Then There Was Heaven: A Journey of Hope and Love, first by recording his life’s story and the incredible experiences of love and healing he shared with the people he met along his journey, then by personally blessing the books as they were being printed.”

Goswami guides us through his theories with humor and illustrative stories (math phobics will be reassured as there is no math at all) and leads us to the same conclusion that every great religion has been saying for centuries — that we are all connected. Once we realize that than global change becomes possible. As “The Quantum Activist” illuminates, when we realize that we are all one, then violence becomes unthinkable. If we are all connected to each other and to the earth, than stealing land or resources, or squandering them becomes impossible. We are only damaging ourselves when we damage the earth.

Thomas Berry passed away early on the morning of June 1st at Wellspring home where he had been living in Greensboro, North Carolina. He died peacefully and with family at his side. Thomas Berry was born in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1914. From his academic beginnings as a historian of world cultures and religions, Berry developed into a historian of the Earth and its evolutionary processes. He describes himself as a “geologian.”

“We’re in the infancy,” said Dr. Ali Rezai, director of the Center for Neurological Restoration at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic. During a surgery called deep brain stimulation – performed while patients with Parkinson’s disease are awake – Rezai and his team play classical compositions and measure the brain’s response to those notes. “We know music can calm, influence creativity, can energize. That’s great. But music’s role in recovering from disease is being ever more appreciated.”

We learn in Dr. Lerma’s book how he has devoted his career to compiling anecdotal and scientific research on near-death and pre-death experiences, hallucinations, visions, synchronicities, and angelic conversations of terminally-ill patients. He recounts in Learning From the Light how children and adults confront their deaths through the comforting visions of divine beings. He is currently involved in a research project in palliative medicine with MD Anderson Hospital, the leading cancer institute in the world.