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Are your thoughts generating life-threatening levels of emotional stress? Oftentimes we hold onto negative thoughts and emotions that are actually devastating your health — mentally and physically. Research has shown that high stress levels can actually increase your overall chance of death by a staggering 50%. Is your mindset propelling you into a strained state of less-than-optimal health? Some people drag foul moods and thoughts with them like extra baggage. A small decision as to whether or not you want to continue along this path determines how you choose to act and react for the rest of your day– or perhaps much longer. Often the root causes of the negativity is ignored, with the individual focusing only on the side effects of the real problem. Remind you of something? It sounds like the ridiculous method of mainstream pharmaceutical science: treat the symptoms, not the disease!
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 Eliminating gluten from the diet can relieve brain fog (mental confusion)
02 April 12
(NaturalNews) Brain fog is a real problem despite the lack of information in most medical and psychological texts. Brain fog describes mental confusion or a lack of mental clarity. People with brain fog have difficulty thinking clearly most of the time and in varying degrees. A morning bagel, lunchtime sandwich or pasta dinner may be the cause behind this scary condition. Even though the medical community mainly ignores brain fog, it is one of the most important symptoms, says Lawrence Wilson, MD on his website DrLWilson.com. Brain fog is unrelated to depression, dementia or any other mental problem and yet it is rarely accepted as a real symptom that can help make appropriate diagnoses.
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 Using Artist Registries to Market Your Art
02 April 12
Recently I've realized that I've been overlooking one of the simplest, most effective, and cheapest methods for gaining exposure for my art. While I had certainly heard of Artist Registries before, for whatever reason it had never clicked that I should be submitting my work to be included. Many large cities, most states, and numerous private and non-profit art organizations maintain artist registries. An art registry is a listing of artists, often including images of their art, bios, and relevant experience, that is made available to art collectors, gallery directors, buyers, and pretty much anyone else interested in the arts. Often public art programs (like percent for art) include an artist registry as a first step in the selection process.
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 How to Price Your Art - More About Art Prices
02 April 12
A good first step in determining your criteria is to select one or more works of art that you consider typical of your current output and that display an average range of your skills. These would be pieces that you consider neither exceptional nor inferior in any way. If you work in more than one medium or style, select at least one piece that is representative of each. Describe these works, in writing and in detail, in terms of basic physical characteristics as well as in terms of variables unique to your art. Basic physical characteristics include size, subject matter, color, complexity, weight, detail, cost of materials, time necessary to create, and so on. Variables unique to your art might include the number of dogs in the composition, theme, texture, frequency of use of the color orange, direction of the brush strokes, date produced, or degree of abstraction.
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 Organic Brown Rice Syrup: Hidden Arsenic Source
21 Feb 12
If you're shopping organic and see brown rice syrup listed first among ingredients, you may want to think twice: That product could have high levels of potentially toxic arsenic, Dartmouth researchers reported today. A team led by environmental chemist Brian P. Jackson found what Jackson called dangerous amounts of arsenic in organic powdered toddler formula whose top ingredient was brown rice syrup. That formula contained six times more arsenic than the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe for the water supply. Jackson and his colleagues also reported elevated arsenic levels in some brown rice-sweetened cereal bars, energy bars and energy "shots"consumed by endurance athletes, according to a study published today in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.The results, which do not identify any products by name, follow recent reports about trace levels of arsenic in apple juice and previous reports of arsenic in rice.
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 How Do I Lucid Dream Without Consciously Controlling It?
21 Feb 12
In the past, I have become conscious rather frequently in my dreams. For example, last night I was interacting with a few of my friends and right when the conversation took its most exciting turn, I realized I was dreaming and gained control of the dream. The only thing I wanted to do was hear the next sentence! I tried to wait out the end of the conversation and even tried to let the dream continue, but now that I was conscious, I couldn't really be surprised by anything that was happening. What suggestions might you have for actually reaching the part of dreaming where conversation with the subconscious becomes possible? I'm not too worried about the flying or breathing underwater yet (which I actually have done on occasion), but rather, is there a way to really let the dream continue with my conscious mind playing only a minimal part in affecting the actions of others?
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 How to Hang your artwork in a gallery
06 December 11
Bring all your prepared artwork to the space where it will hang. Start by spreading out the pieces and putting them against the wall where you think they might look good. Move the pieces around until you think they look perfect. Enlist an objective person to help with this.
Some things to consider – mixing up or grouping the artwork according to size, color, or theme. Some artists like to include one particularly strong piece on each wall. You might also consider hanging your strongest piece in the spot where the viewer will see it first upon entering the space.
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 What is Organic Paint?
06 December 11
Organic paints are not only more sustainable, they also have their own look and feel to them. This is because of the pigments: natural pigments look more balanced and harmonious than petroleum-based pigments.
Milk paint is an old and ancient paint, it's an organic paint by tradition. Caseine is the binder, it's a milk component and one of the strongest glues around. Milk paint can be bought in powder-form, and stirred to paint with water. Once wet, it has to be used within days (after that, it decays). Milk paint holds well on plaster and untreated wood, it needs an absorbing underground. Wallpaper can be painted too, depending on the absorbing qualities of the wallpaper. Milk paint is matte, and can be made shiny by painting it over with a laquer - for that, you might take an acrylic binder, or a soy-based urethane sealer (search for Eco-Tuff-High-Traffic-Clear-Coat). The colors of milk paint are limited, but you can mix them as you like it.
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 Caffeine-induced psychosis
06 December 11
"If a person were injected with 500 milligrams of caffeine [less than the dosage in some 16-ounce brews], within about an hour he or she would exhibit symptoms of severe mental illness, among them hallucinations, paranoia, panic, mania, and depression. But the same amount of caffeine administered over the course of a day only produces the milder forms of insanity for which we take tranquilizers and antidepressants."
"For five years I worked in a team practice with physicians and psychotherapists. Often, the psychological evaluation would include one or more anxiety syndromes, and the recommendation was for counseling. I would point out that the person was consuming excessive amounts of caffeine and request a trial month off caffeine prior to therapy sessions. In about 50% of cases, the anxiety syndrome would resolve with caffeine withdrawal alone."
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 How to carve marble, limestone, soapstone and alabaster sculptures
06 November 11
How do I start out?
If I know what I'm going to carve, I usually start out by making a rough drawing of my idea. Then I find a piece of stone that fits the design as close as possible. The reason for this is you want to keep the amount of stone to be removed to a minimum. I make a drawing on the stone itself and rough it out. Do not use a marker or pen with any kind of ink in it. I did this on one of my sculptures and it bled several centimeters into the stone. If you cannot remove a lot of stone you'll have a permanent smear to explain to your viewing public (mine is blue). Use pencil or crayon. The first step is roughing out the stone. This is where the majority of the stone is removed and is done with a heavy chisel made for removing large amounts of stone or with power tools such as a circular saw with a masonry blade on it or an angle grinder with a diamond stone cutting blade on it. A word of caution here, wear safety glasses, dust mask and hearing protectors. These are a necessity and can be gotten at minimum cost at most hardware stores. Don't try to slice off big chunks out of the stone. Instead make several cuts with the power tool into the stone to make a series of grooves leaving small slices (maybe 1/2 in. thick) of stone in between. These are easily removed without fear of damaging the rest of the stone as can happen with beating it to take off a big chunk. Now that the outline of the piece is developed we go to the point chisel.
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 Suncream may interfere with skin's natural defence to UV light
06 November 11
Suncream may actually block the body's natural defence against harmful UV rays, a surprising new study has found. Scientists from Brown University have discovered that human skin contains sensors that detect radiation from the sun. These light receptors - which are also found in the retina of the eye - immediately prompt the release of melanin, the body's own form of sun protection.
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 The Pineal Gland -- The "Seat of the Soul"?
18 October 11
After writing several articles on reincarnation and enlightenment, many readers asked me why I never mentioned the significance of the pineal gland -- a small structure about the size of a pea, located in the middle of the brain. For centuries this gland has been thought of by occultists and spiritual masters as the "seat of the soul" -- a phrase made popular by Descartes (1662 AD).
Descartes was obsessed with understanding who we are. He questioned everything -- even the notion that we can know ourselves. He observed that the senses can be fooled, that most of what we think we know is really illusion and finally struggled with the possibility that our own identity as individuals was also not real. But in the end he concluded that if it was possible to doubt our own existence, there had to be some "thing" that was capable of experiencing this doubt. And that thing was our true self.
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 Oil Painting Medium – To use or not to use?
18 October 11
What is a painting medium and should I be using it? Two good questions. Understanding what a an oil painting medium is and how it’s used will not only help you develop a process for applying your paint but it will also help you get the desired surface effect in your paintings.
A medium is something that is mixed with oil paint to change it’s consistency from fat (oily) paint to lean (thin) paint, or vice versa. That “something” can simply be a solvent like turpentine or any combination of oil, varnish, and solvent. There are other uses for painting medium but we’ll just stick to this definition for now.
There is no rule that says you must use a medium. In fact, many artists prefer to paint without it. It really depends on the look and feel you are after. Medium will alter the look and feel of the paint strokes as you apply them on the canvas. For example, a lean painting medium extends the color over the canvas allowing you to make longer, thinner strokes of color as compared to painting without a medium.
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 How to Photograph Art
18 October 11
If your art involves color, shape, dimension or texture, direct sunlight is the best light source, and it is widely available on this planet. Not talking about full — or open — shade (illuminated by the overly blue sky above), not dappled light (like from a tree's varying shadows), not overcast sky light (when the sun goes behind a cloud), but direct light beamed down 93 million miles from our local star.Direct sunlight, however, is not always available, and other natural and unnatural light sources have their qualities, too. (See Other Light, below.) They're just not as good nor cheap nor easy to deal with as the light from the sun. Whatever size your camera's sensor or film is — or whatever the stated resolution (usually measured in megapixels) — from one of the dinky ones with a fingernail-sized sensor on an under $100 Point & Shoot to the much larger sensors on an expensive full-frame digital Single Lens Reflex (or even larger and much more expensive, larger format cameras), if you fill the frame with your piece of art — get close enough so the art nearly fills the viewfinder — you'll make the best use of whatever resolution your camera has. The more you crop (remove non-object space around the object in your photographic frame — usually an LCD, sometimes a viewfinder), the more you lose resolution.
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 Lucid Dreaming as Shamanic Consciousness
03 October 11
lucid dreaming is not the same as dream control. You can have meta-cognition without control, and you can manipulate the dream without any awareness you're in a dream at all. Both lucidity and control shift in quality at all times too, so a lucid dream can have some pretty un-lucid moments and a control dream is always full of material not consciously selected by the dream ego.
Anthropologist Michael Winkelman describes a more appropriate model of the sort of consciousness highlighted during lucid dreams. He calls it shamanic consciousness, in which we are capable of holding the emotional vibrancy of the dream simultaneously with the focus and volition that marks our waking lives.Remember, the dreamstate is still running the show despite having self-awareness, or what psychologists call formal self-reference, and this is the fuel for the shamanic fire.
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