Grieving is a natural process we all go through when we experience loss. The more significant the loss, the more profoundly the grief is felt! Grieving is usually associated with the death of a loved one, however grief is a natural response to any loss. Experiencing grief in any of the following situations is completely normal and this list is by no means exhaustive:

• Retirement
• Moving home
• Death of a loved one, friend and/or pet
• Significant life changes
• Diagnosis of an illness
• Acts of violence
• Natural disasters
• Change in job
• Loss of independence
• Injury and/or disability

Grieving can be painful and the emotions can be challenging to deal with. Feelings around denial, anger, helplessness, being vulnerable, wanting to regain control (If only I…), depression, sadness, regret and isolation can be emotions felt when grieving but you do not necessarily have to go through each emotion to move on and they are not necessarily experienced in that order. The grieving process takes time and there is no specific time scale in which people heal and move on. Grieving can not be hurried. It can take weeks, months or years. Whatever your experience the most important thing to remember is to allow the process to unfold naturally, be gentle with yourself and seek support, help and guidance when you need it. The strongest of people can need professional support and the smartest know when to ask for it. There is no “right way” to deal with grief and each person will respond differently. However there are “healthier ways” in which to deal with grief, which will support you to move on when you are ready.

Here are my top 10 tips when grieving:

1. Eat properly and take care of yourself.

Grief can put a lot of strain on your mind and body so it is important to feed your body with nourishing foods to help combat the effects of stress. High stress levels can lower your immune system and make you more susceptible to colds, flu and other illnesses. Eat nutrient dense foods, drink plenty of water and get enough sleep. Make sure you keep appointments with healthcare providers.

2. Write down what you are feeling.

Keep a journal about your daily life and life as a whole. Write as much or as little as you like. This is your journal and your life – you are in control. Some people find it helpful to share their written thoughts, others keep them under lock and key. Choose what feels right for you. Write down the emotions you felt through out the day and why you think you felt them. Notice if there are any specific triggers. This also helps to organise your thoughts and make sense of your feelings. It also makes it easier to process and make them seem less overwhelming. Write down a list of what you have been grateful for during your day and in your life – a gratitude list. Re-reading your gratitude list helps you to get through tougher days.

3. Do activities you enjoy.

Finding something you enjoy doing helps occupy your mind and supports you to be present. Any activity will engage your mind and body but creative activities such as painting, drawing, dance, singing, music, cooking and so on, are a great way to express yourself emotionally. When you apply yourself fully, notice how enlivened you feel. Getting energised this way will bring a sense of hope and opportunity to do something you’ve always fancied doing.

4. Be fully open to receive new experiences.

Try saying “yes” to opportunities. This will open you up to new and different experiences. When one door closes another opens. Trust that life does not give you anything you cannot cope with. Try something new. Remember this is a process you are going through that will not last forever – you will get through this.

5. Find groups to share with.

Joining a group that shares the same creative expression can allow you to feel a sense of community and provide opportunity to make friends, discuss feelings and learn from others who have been through a similar experience. Choose a group that is understanding and compassionate to your situation.

6. Get physical.

Start getting physically active. Jog, run, dance, yoga, join a fitness class, walk the dog but try to do something every day. This is about you doing something for you, getting time with your thoughts and getting out of your home. Physical exercise also aids a healthy mind and body and is a great stress, anger and depression buster.

7. Feed your mind positivity.

Try and avoid watching and reading “bad news”. This may seem obvious but watching and reading negative information is not conducive to your healing process. Find positive things to surround yourself with; entertaining programmes, watching an uplifting film or reading a good book. Socialise with friends and family who make you feel good and are supportive. Let them be there for you and forget the people that don’t show up for now; if they are meant to be in your life, they will show up again at some point. People usually fall into two categories with grief. They either distance themselves as they aren’t sure how to help – not because of you, it’s because of their own short comings or they are very supportive indeed.

8. It’s okay not to be okay.

Grieving can be a difficult process. Don’t try and keep up the impression that everything is okay when it isn’t – accept that you are not okay. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Allow yourself to experience the emotions you need to go through. Try not to resist them as this will make them seem stronger and prolong feeling them. If you need to cry, cry. If you feel angry, feel angry. Be gentle and be self-compassionate and know that you are not going crazy. Research the grieving process to educate yourself – knowledge is power. Don’t try and figure it out by yourself. The internet is a miraculous free fountain of knowledge so use it to understand what you are experiencing.

9. Have “acceptance” as your goal.

Processing your emotions in writing supports you to move towards acceptance. When you write something down repeatedly, your mind no longer looks for answers to questions you just couldn’t quite figure out. Reaching a point of acceptance can mean many things and you may feel that it is too soon to “accept” what has happened – this is okay. As mentioned earlier; there is no time scale when grieving, so move at your own pace and do what feels right for you. Acceptance will happen when you are ready.

10. The most important point to remember.

You are doing great in your own way – everyone experiences grief differently. What other people think has nothing to do with you. Being self-compassionate determines whether or not you want to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and give life another go. It’s a much easier choice to try and learn from an experience than to judge yourself negatively about the way you’re experiencing it. Be true to yourself. This will bring many more moments of joy and happiness into your life which will encourage you to keep moving forward.

Use the grieving process as an opportunity. An opportunity to be authentic through self compassion and to love yourself. Be your true self. You are strong, capable and beautiful. You will get through this part of your journey and be stronger for it.

By Siȃn Evans    www.holisticink.com

Article from: http://www.holistictherapistmagazine.com

CranioSacral Therapy: When Can It Help

Dee Kassing, BS, MLS, IBCLC
(with special thanks to David Bemis, D.C., who has taught me so much)

In recent years, there have been frequent references to CranioSacral Therapy and other bodywork for infants who are having difficulty breastfeeding. John Upledger, D.O., first discovered the cranial-sacral system with its rhythm unique from other body systems. Although Dr. Upledger was the first to develop CranioSacral Therapy, and many therapists have been trained in his methods, other practitioners have developed variations. Any of the methods might be helpful to a baby. When choosing a therapist, who could be a certified massage therapist, a physical therapist, a chiropractor, etc., be sure to ask how much training and experience in working with infants the therapist has had.

Some chiropractors are also accredited in pediatric chiropractic. This is a different type of bodywork, but can also be very helpful to infants. Adult chiropractic applied to babies would be dangerous, so again it is necessary to ask about the chiropractor’s training and experience.

It is important for the lactation consultant to be able to recognize symptoms in the infant that can show a need for bodywork therapy. Some of the symptoms are very noticeable and others are quite subtle. For some involving motion, the key will be if the symptom appears consistently. Although some symptoms will be obvious while baby is at breast, others will be more noticeable when baby is laid flat on his back on a firm surface such as a changing table. I try to examine baby on a firm surface after he has finished the first breast, but before the second. When baby is very hungry, he will not lay calmly for me to observe his natural position and how he moves. But if I wait until he has finished the second breast, he may be asleep. Furthermore, if he gets impatient and upset with me during the examination, mom can calm him by offering him the second breast. In my attempt to be thorough, I will start at the top of the head, describing things to watch for, and work my way down through the body.

Sometimes, looking at the center of the top of the head, you will be able to notice that one side of the skull is slightly elevated compared to the other side. This can happen in babies who did not experience vacuum extraction, but can be even more prominent if vacuum extraction did occur. Look at baby’s skull and feel carefully (feeling can be particularly important if baby has a lot of hair) for ridges. Notice if the baby’s head appears cone-shaped. During birth, the bones of the skull need to slide over each other so the baby can fit through the birth canal. After birth, the bones are supposed to slide back into their proper position, but sometimes they need gentle help to accomplish this.

Why is this important? Fascia is connective tissue which unites skin to the underlying tissues. Fascia also surrounds and separates many of the muscles, and sometimes holds them together. Ligaments are bands of tissue that bind bones together or support organs. The head is made up of a number of bony plates. Ligaments hold the bones of the head in position. Fascia connects skin to the bones of the head, connects the bones to the dura mater covering the brain and spinal cord, and surrounds other structures in the face and head. The hard palate is formed by two palatal bones, and the soft palate is muscle covered by mucous membrane. Because of connective tissues such as ligaments and fascia, the structure and alignment of the palate are influenced by the alignment of the other skull bones.

If there is misalignment and imbalance of the skull bones, this can affect the function of the palate, tongue, and other structures of the head. This can cause the palate to be too high or uneven, or the facial muscles to be too tight. Imbalance of the structures of the head, as well as trauma from the birth process itself, can cause constant irritation to the nervous system. This constant irritation may also cause hypersensitivity, which can sometimes be the underlying cause for babies who gag and cannot accept anything in the center or back of the mouth.

If baby spent a lot of time during labor banging the top of his head against the cervix, you may see the side bones of the head bulging out over baby’s ears.

You may see the back of baby’s head protruding farther than normal. This may cause the baby to be unable to look forward while lying on a firm surface, such as when he is in his carseat. If baby turns his head easily to both sides, but seems reluctant to look straight ahead, it may be that the shape of his head causes him to flex his neck too much when facing forward. This can sometimes interfere with breathing. The skull protruding improperly may also cause tenderness, so the baby prefers to rest on either side of his head rather than on the back of his head. Baby does not usually lie on the back of his head during breastfeeding, but the fascia and ligaments attached to the protruding bones may be stretched too tight and not allow other structures to work efficiently.

Notice baby’s eyes. Although baby may at times have one eye open wider than the other, this should be transient. If baby consistently has the same eye wider than the other eye, this can indicate an imbalance in the facial muscles.
Baby’s lips should appear soft and relaxed. If baby’s lips are frequently pursed while he is resting or even sleeping, this can indicate that there is too much tension in the facial muscles.

When baby extends his tongue, the tongue should remain round. If the tongue consistently appears very pointy when it is extended, this can also indicate too much tension. If the tongue consistently pulls off to the side when baby extends it, this will make it difficult for baby to correctly trough the tongue during breastfeeding. For babies with more severe problems, the tongue may even be held to the side of the mouth while it is still completely within the oral cavity.

When baby opens his mouth, his jaw should drop straight down towards his navel. If the jaw consistently opens even slightly toward the left or the right, this can make it difficult for baby to maintain a seal around the breast and to milk the breast appropriately during downward strokes of the jaw. Some moms report that baby hurts them more on one breast than the other when the jaw pulls to the side.

Watch how baby is able to move his neck. He should be able to easily turn his head completely to each side, so that the cheek is flat on the firm surface and the ear disappears, while his body stays straight. If he cannot turn his head completely to the side, this can indicate that something in his neck is uncomfortable. If he can only turn his head to the side while his body “corkscrews” in the opposite direction, there may be a vertebra that twisted and is riding on a nerve.

Likewise, if baby prefers to consistently turn his head to one side, and rarely turns it in the opposite direction, this can again indicate that something in his neck is not moving freely. Babies who can only turn their head in one direction frequently cause a lot of pain and/or trauma to one nipple.

While baby is turning his head, watch where his chin ends up. Some babies must lift their chin so their head tips back when they turn in one direction, but their chin runs into their shoulder when they turn in the other direction. This indicates an imbalance that needs to be relieved.

While the baby is resting on his back looking at you, notice his shoulders. They should appear level. One shoulder should not consistently be higher than the other.

While baby is lying on his back, he should be able to lie with his torso in a straight line. Some babies look like a crescent moon. If baby is “curved” and you gently straighten him out, but he springs right back into that crescent moon pose as soon as you let go of him, he needs some attention from an appropriate practitioner. Baby’s hips and shoulders should appear level most of the time while he is resting.If you are working with a baby who is having trouble breastfeeding, and you see any of these postural symptoms, suggest to the mother that she consider taking her baby to a CranioSacral therapist or pediatric chiropractor.

Article from:  http://www.breastfeedingonline.com

bullseyeForm

Use the Bull’s eye form to practice clarifying values, estimate the extent to which you are living consistent with your values.

Open the form by clicking on the link above, then save the form to your own computer. Follow the instructions on the form to fill in your copy with your discoveries about your own values and how well you are living those values.

Taken from: courses.edx.org

Going out in public without a hijab can get you 70 lashes and 60 days in prison, but these women are taking the risk

In some ways, the social police in Iran have become less suffocating in recent decades. Unmarried men and women now date, and sometimes even live together. Meanwhile, Facebook may be illegal, but the government generally ignores the 4 million Iranians who use it regularly.

But one area where the government has been unyielding is with the dress code for women. They are required to dress “modestly,” which includes always wearing a veil. If they remove their veils in public, they can receive 70 lashes or 60 days in prison.

Now some Iranian women are challenging that rule in a particularly in-your-face way. They have taken to Facebook to post photos of themselves veil-less. Instead of wearing the veils, they’re wrapping them around their necks, holding them up or flying them like ceremonial flags. The veils are everywhere except where the government says they’re supposed to be—on women’s heads, covering their hair.

This is the photo which started it all, one woman who threw off her headdress and invited others to join her.

FACEBOOK/ MASIH ALINEJAD

A Facebook post earlier this month from liberal Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad sparked the movement, which has grown under the hashtag#آزادی‌یواشکی (translation: #stealthfreedom). It has spawned a Facebook page of its own, which gathered over 30,000 likes in its first five days.

FACEBOOK/آزادی های یواشکی زنان در

The movement’s creator, Alinejad, lives in exile in the United Kingdom, where she works for OnTen, a satirical news show that’s broadcast into Iran by Voice of America’s Persian Service. “I just asked women to send selfies of their private moments of freedom,” she says. “When I was in Iran, I would take my head scarf off when I was out in a field or some place private, and I wondered how many Iranian women [did the same]. Apparently a lot.”

FACEBOOK/آزادی های یواشکی زنان در

Many of these women have added poignant commentary. ”I always take off the hijab whenever I can because it was never my choice to put it on,” says one Facebook user who also posted a photo.

FACEBOOK/آزادی های یواشکی زنان در

Another recounts a run-in with the moral police, the Basij: “My mother hadn’t worn the veil until the early 1980s when she was threatened by a member of Basij. He aimed a rifle at her. …My grandfather suggests that we shouldn’t sit in front of him with veil on. It depresses him. …My generation has not been able to enjoy life, and I’ve been asked, ‘Aren’t you bored?’”

FACEBOOK/آزادی های یواشکی زنان در

This isn’t the first time Iranian women have protested the veil in public or on social media, but it’s the most direct challenge yet. Women have been subtly defying the veil mandate since former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami came to power 1997 by draping the veil loosely over their buns and exposing the hair near their faces.

Since then, the loose veil has become the standard among young, liberal Iranian women. Even Iranian designers dress their models in this fashion, like in this photo:

FACEBOOK/ANARGOL

Since sparking the movement, Alinejad has faced criticism and pressure from the Iranian right. Conservatives even launched a pro-veil protest on Wednesday. She says she has been “attacked by hardline conservative news agencies inside Iran” and that government-affiliated Fars News has called her “anti-revolutionary.”

She also says she hasn’t received any political backing from the left: “No political figure inside Iran has called for any reform of the hijab laws. Ironically, Iranian women have overwhelmingly voted for the most liberal candidates who promise less restrictions, but in reality the restrictions are rarely eased.”

 Article taken from:  http://www.vocativ.com

Watching you playing I see aspects of this wonderful and deep healing art.

Thank you!

hare on Facebook Share on Twitter

Real life is the game that – literally – everyone is playing. But it can be tough. This is your guide.

Basics

You might not realise, but real life is a game of strategy. There are some fun mini-games – like dancing, driving, running, and sex – but the key to winning is simply managing your resources.

Most importantly, successful players put their time into the right things. Later in the game money comes into play, but your top priority should always be mastering where your time goes.

Childhood

Life begins when you’re assigned a random character and circumstances:

The first 15 years or so of life are just tutorial missions, which suck. There’s no way to skip these.

Young adult stage

As a young player, you’ll have lots of time and energy, but almost no experience. You’ll find most things – like the best jobs, possessions and partners – are locked until you get some.

This is the time to level up your skills quickly. You will never have so much time and energy again.

Now that you’re playing properly, your top priority is to assign your time as well as possible. Every single thing you do affects your state and your skills:

This may sound simple, but the problem is you won’t always know what tasks to choose, and your body won’t always obey your commands. Let’s break it down.

How to obey your own commands

Many players find that when they choose to do something – say “go to the gym” – their body ignores them completely.

This is not a bug. Everybody has a state, which you can’t see directly, but looks something like this:

If your state gets too low in one area, your body will disobey your own instructions until your needs are met. Try studying when you’re exhausted and hungry, and watch your concentration switch to Twitter.

Your willpower level is especially important. Willpower fades throughout the day, and is replenished slightly by eating, and completely by a good night’s sleep. When your willpower is low, you are only able to do things you really want to.

Every decision you have to make costs willpower, and decisions where you have to suppress an appealing option for a less appealing one (e.g. exercise instead of watch TV) require a lot of willpower.

There are various tricks to keep your behaviour in line:

1. Keep your state high. If you’re hungry, exhausted, or utterly deprived of fun, your willpower will collapse. Ensure you take consistently good care of yourself.
2. Don’t demand too much willpower from one day. Spread your most demanding tasks over multiple days, and mix them in with less demanding ones.
3. Attempt the most important tasks first. This makes other tasks more difficult, but makes your top task more likely.
4. Reduce the need to use willpower by reducing choices. If you’re trying to work on a computer that can access Facebook, you’ll need more willpower because you’re constantly choosing the hard task over the easy one. Eliminate such distractions.

A key part of playing the game is balancing your competing priorities with the state of your body. Just don’t leave yourself on autopilot, or you’ll never get anything done.

Choosing the right tasks

Choosing the right tasks at the right time is most of the game. Some tasks mostly affect your state, e.g.

Others mostly affect your skills:

You need to put time into things that ensure a healthy state – like food and sleep – to keep your willpower high. And then you need to develop your skills with what you have left.

Some skills are more valuable than others. Good ones can open up whole paths like a tech tree:

Others are dead ends:

Combinations of skills are the most effective. It’s very hard to max out one skill to be the best – in fact, that’s often impossible. But it’s much easier to get pretty decent at lots of related skills that amount to something bigger, e.g.

See how psychology just helped you become both rich and attractive? You should study that.

Where you live

Your environment has a constant impact on your stats, skills, and your chances of levelling up.

It’s possible to play the game well almost anywhere, but it’s a lot easier in certain places. If you’re female and in the wrong country, for example, you can’t unlock many achievements.

The odds of anyone being born in their optimal location are virtually zero, so research your options, and consider moving early. Location is a multiplier to all of your skills and states.

Finding a partner

Attraction is a complex mini-game in itself, but mostly a byproduct of how you’re already playing. If you have excellent state and high skills, you’re far more attractive already. A tired, irritable, unskilled player is not appealing, and probably shouldn’t be looking for a relationship.

Early in the game it can be common to reject and be rejected by other players. This is normal, but unfortunately it can drain your state, as most players don’t handle rejection or rejecting well. You’ll need to expend willpower to keep going, and willpower is replenished by sleep, so give it time.

80% of finding someone comes down to being your most attractive self, which – like so much in life – just means putting your time in the right places. If you’re exercising, socialising, well nourished and growing in your career, you will radiate attraction automatically. The remaining 20% is simply putting yourself in places where you can meet the right people.

Money money money

Later in the game you’ll have to manage a new resource called ‘money’. Most players will find money increases throughout the early game, but that this actually introduces more problems, not less.

The most important rule of money is never to borrow it, except for things that earn you more back. For example, education or a mortgage can be worthwhile (but are not necessarily so, depending on the education or the mortgage). Borrowing to buy new shoes is not.

Depending on your financial ambitions, here are a few strategies to bear in mind:

1. Not fussed about money. The low-stress strategy: simply live within your means and save a little for a rainy day. Be sure to make the best of all the time you save though, or you’ll regret it.
2. Well off. Choose a career and environment carefully, and be prepared to move often to move up. You’ll need to invest heavily in matching skills, which will cost you time, and be careful not to abuse your state or you’ll burn out.
3. Mega rich. Start your own business. It’s almost impossible to get rich working for someone else. Riches do not come from work alone, they come from  owning things – assets – that pay back more than they cost, and your own company is a powerful asset you can create from scratch. Compound your winnings into more assets, and eventually they can remove your need to work at all.

Later life

Your options change as the game progresses. Marriage and children will reduce your time and energy, and introduce more random elements into the game (“Emergency diaper change!”). This makes it harder to develop yourself as quickly.

Older characters usually have more skills, resources and experience, unlocking quests that were previously impossible, like “owning a house”, or “writing a (good) novel”.

All players die after about 29,000 days, or 80 years. If your stats and skills are good, you might last a little longer. There is no cheat code to extend this.

At the start of the game, you had no control over who you were or your environment. By the end of the game that becomes true again. Your past decisions drastically shape where you end up, and if you’re happy, healthy, fulfilled – or not – in your final days there’s far less you can do about it.

That’s why your strategy is important. Because by the time most of us have figured life out, we’ve used up too much of the best parts.

Now you’d best get playing.

Article from:  http://oliveremberton.com

The Trouble With Mirror Neurons

When researchers discovered neurons in monkey brains that fired when an action was performed or observed, they were dubbed “mirror neurons.” And they quickly became the go-to explanation for empathy. Decades later, says Sharon Begley, the evidence that human beings have them is sketchy at best.

Illustration by Gavin Potenza

By Sharon Begley

In 1992, scientists at Italy’s University of Parma announced the genuinely exciting discovery that certain neurons in the premotor cortex of macaques fire under two quite different conditions: when the monkeys execute a specific action like reaching for food and when they merely observe an experimenter performing that action. Until then, the textbook wisdom in neuroscience had been that brain cells execute an action or observe one—not both. The Parma find seemed to show that “cells in the motor system fire when I see you make a movement, and they’re the same ones that fire when I make that movement,” according to neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni of the University of California, Los Angeles. “We didn’t think the brain was organized this way.” In 1996, these cells got their intriguing moniker, reflecting that the neurons “mirrored” observed behavior by firing as if the observer were not just seeing the action but also executing it.

It was like a starter’s pistol had gone off in the neuroscience lounge.

The discovery of mirror neurons would launch a “revolution” in understanding empathy and cooperation, predicted one researcher. Mirror neurons were “the driving force” behind the “great leap forward” in brain evolution, claimed another. They “will provide a unifying framework and explain a host of mental abilities that hitherto remained mysterious,” asserted a third, calling these cells “the neurons that shaped civilization.” Other researchers asserted that mirror neurons spurred the development of language (the human analogue of the monkeys’ premotor region is Broca’s area, which is involved in producing spoken language) and of theory of mind, our ability to infer what someone thinks, believes, or feels. Broken mirror neurons were invoked to explain autism, which is characterized by an inability to intuit others’ feelings and state of mind. One scholar invoked mirror neurons to argue for the superiority of face-to-face diplomacy, which, he said, allows negotiators “to transmit information and empathize with each other.”

The media piled on. Popular stories have invoked mirror neurons to explain everything from crying at movies to selfless acts of heroism and why hospital patients feel better when they have visitors.

To some neuroscientists, it was all a bit much. After giving a speech at the University of California, Davis, in 2010, I had dinner with members of the psychology department, and innocently asked about mirror neurons. From the collective eye roll, you’d think I’d asked about creationism. And as the number of scientific papers on mirror neurons approached 800 in 2012, Christian Jarrett of the British Psychological Society called them “perhaps the most hyped topic in neuroscience.” Psychology professor Morton Ann Gernsbacher of the University of Wisconsin told me recently, “Mirror neuron theory is being used as an explanation for many phenomena in social cognition without the claims being supported with actual data.”

Let’s try to separate wheat from chaff.

Do humans have mirror neurons? Given the similarities between our brains and monkeys’, we should. But clear evidence has been hard to come by, mostly because the most direct test—using electrodes to detect the firing of individual neurons to be sure the same ones fire during observing an action and executing it—is too invasive to be ethically done on healthy volunteers. In 2010, however, Iacoboni and his colleagues piggy-backed on epilepsy surgery, in which such electrodes are temporarily implanted into patients’ brains. Result: certain neurons fired when the patients both observed (on a laptop) and performed grasping actions and facial gestures.

Unfortunately, the study used only 21 patients and has not been independently confirmed. Also, the purported mirror neurons were not where monkeys’ neurons are but, among other places, in regions involved in memory. That raised concerns that the neurons firing during both observation and execution were involved in remembering the action, and thus not true mirror neurons. As a 2013 review put it, research results “cannot yet furnish conclusive proof” that humans have them.

If we do, can mirror neurons cause us to feel other people’s emotions and therefore underlie empathy? Here’s the logic: the mirror circuitry that’s activated during both the performance and observation of an action is probably wired into the circuitry that “knows” the goal of that action, Iacoboni told me, since “actions come with intentions. Mirror neurons activate meaning or intention circuits from within. It’s deeper than cognitive understanding.” Similarly, the circuitry that produces smiles, frowns, or other expressions seems to be connected to circuits that encode the associated feeling (hence the common experience of feeling a little happier if you make yourself smile). Since mirror circuitry fires at the sight of someone else making a face, that would trigger the same “feeling” circuits as are tripped when we make the face. Presto: A mechanism for inferring what another person feels.

Skeptics point out, however, that we don’t need to perform an action in order to understand why someone is doing it or what it feels like. I understand my husband’s goal when he removes an outlet plate and starts pulling out wires even though my own motor neurons have never rewired a circuit. “We’re able to understand many actions— and the goals of those actions—which we’ve never executed ourselves,” Gernsbacher argued. “And there are people who can decipher the emotion in facial expression without being able to make the expressions themselves” due to brain damage or other disability. That suggests a mirror system, even if we have one, is not necessary for empathy or theory of mind.

Many scientific papers promise “evidence for mirror neuron dysfunction in autism,” but only some are confirmed by other labs. Even fewer use bulletproof methodology. Some of the autism/ mirror-neuron studies, for instance, used neuroimaging to measure brain activity when people with autism executed movements on their own or imitated gestures in a picture. The region suspected of harboring human mirror neurons showed less activity, compared to normally developing participants, during the imitation task.

But it’s not clear that imitating has much to do with autism, Gernsbacher and other critics point out. “Many studies have found that neither autistic children nor autistic adults have any difficulty understanding the intention of other people’s actions,” as would be predicted by the mirror-neurons/ autism hypothesis, she said. “The bulk of brain imaging studies fail to support it.”

Mirror neurons were indeed a paradigm-changing discovery. From the observation that some premotor neurons fire when action is observed rather than performed, however, it is quite a leap to empathy, autism, and the rest. It’s natural to root for the human brain to have as many cool components as possible, and enticing to think that one of them offers a simple and elegant answer to the question of what make us human. But even if it turns out that we don’t have these nifty mirror neurons, it doesn’t make us any less empathetic. We just lack a simple neurological explanation for it.

Tomorrow’s sociologists will have a field day studying how claims about mirror neurons became part of the popular culture even as neuroscientists became skeptical of the unbridled exuberance. It’s a great case study of how once a scientific notion takes hold in the popular mind, it’s hard to jam it back into Pandora’s box.

Sharon Begley is the senior health and science correspondent at Reuters, author of Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, and coauthor with Richard Davidson of The Emotional Life of Your Brain.

Article originally published on www.mindful.org