Category: Intuition

Creativity & Healing - A Booster

10/21/2024

Art teaches us to trust the process, roll with uncertainty, know that the answers will present themselves when we’re not looking so hard.

This past weekend, someone asked if I’d read Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert. With my life feeling a bit stagnant, I took it as a sign from the universe.

As I dive into the book, I’m reminded how crucial creativity was in my own healing journey. Exploring the creative process awakened my then dormant right brain, providing both the spark and the fuel when I felt depleted. Through collage and writing, creativity connected me to life's mystery and taught me not only to navigate uncertainty but to embrace it. Like any mental process, if we don't use it—and its neuronal pathways—we lose it.

This post, shared from a year ago, is for anyone, like me, who might need a creative nudge or boost…

Read the full article on Substack

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Undermethylation & Strengthening the Right Brain in a Left Brain World

7/30/2019

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“Mary Poppins Goes To the Beach” -Made by combining pieces from 3 collages in my Impermanent Art Series.

By Courtney Snyder, MD

Half of my work day is spent honing in on details. For each person I evaluate and treat, I’m considering multiple symptoms, lab data, contributing factors, and treatment interventions. Left unchecked, this amount of detail hurts my brain - figuratively and literally. This type of work might be considered “left brain“ and appealing to someone who is “undermethylated,” which I am.

The other half of my work day is involved with addressing how, from a spiritual perspective, we:

lower our stress by learning to let go and stop grasping for outcomes
learn to feel at home in our body
learn to connect with others
find peace in this world
find purpose and meaning in this life
live in the present
feel part of something larger than ourselves

By spiritual, I mean our inner life. My writing and teaching about the intersection between neuroplasticity and spirituality is essentially about how we exercise those parts of the brain that relate to that inner work. Instead of honing in on details, this is about pulling back and looking at the bigger picture of our lives and our humanity. This right brain work feels good.

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Mold Toxicity - Depression, Anxiety, Fatigue, Brain Fog & Inattention

5/16/2019

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"Light Showers on Tidy Town" paper, acrylic on 24 x 48" canvas "Inspired by the coastal towns of Ireland."

By Courtney Snyder

One of the challenges of writing blog posts that explore root causes of brain related symptoms is that what we are learning is constantly evolving. There's so much we still and will never know. Another challenge - everything is interconnected. The best I can do is to write about these root causes separately. While some contributing factors can occur in parallel, one condition is often leading to other downstream conditions that themselves contribute to things like depressed mood, anxiety, mood swings, brain fog/inattention and so forth.

Mold toxicity is a perfect example. It can contribute to Pyrrole Disorder due the stress it puts on the body. It can lead to elevated copper by overwhelming one of the antioxidants in the body that regulates copper. Because it interferes with the immune system, it can lead to a susceptibility to candida/yeast, Lyme and its co-infections. It also frequently worsens mast cell activation (see last post). I consider it a root of the roots. In my daily work, I find mold toxicity to be very common. Here’s why -

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Purpose and 'Our Fleeting Moment Here on Earth'

2/4/2016

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Courtney Snyder, MD

Purpose, Healing and Happiness
Whatever language, symbolism or religious framework we use or try not to use, many of us believe there's a reason each of us are here ...at this time, in this place and with these people. Though I think a lot about the details of health, I fall short on the bigger picture of healing if I forget that our wellbeing depends on much more, not the least of which is having a deep sense of purpose in our lives.

Purpose can energize us. It is a reason to do the hard work; to get out of bed. It lowers stress and it’s associated physiologic responses. Futility is stressful. So is incongruence - the mismatch between our natural abilities and passions and what we’re actually doing. With purpose comes a clarity about what and with whom we want to spend our time.

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Reclaiming Inner Authority in a Hierarchical World

7/28/2015

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Courtney Snyder, MD

In these next couple weeks, as we help our children collect needed supplies for school and other activities, let us remember to have inner authority high on the list. (I wrote this post for my other blog a few years ago. I hope it is still useful now).

Reclaiming Inner Authority in a Hierarchical World Gone Mad
(November 10, 2011) by Courtney Snyder, MD

Last week I saw a clip from the Jimmy Kimmel Show in which he asked parents to post videos to Youtube of children’s reaction after they (the parents) tell them they've eaten all their Halloween candy. From an overwhelming number of videos posted, Kimmel shared a few. Why were those parents so up for a task in which they inflict emotional pain on their children, video tape it and share it with the world? Who was so insensitive to them when they were children?

“It was just a joke,” “Where’s your sense of humor,” “You’re no fun,” is how some might respond.

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Creativity & Healing - A Booster

Undermethylation & Strengthening the Right Brain in a Left Brain World

Mold Toxicity - Depression, Anxiety, Fatigue, Brain Fog & Inattention

Purpose and 'Our Fleeting Moment Here on Earth'

Reclaiming Inner Authority in a Hierarchical World

Courtney Snyder, MD

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