dharmapunx NYC

There’s a great deal of societal emphasis on presenting life as a competitive encounter, a challenge to see ‘who can reach the sweet life in time to grab the goodies, for there’s only so much stuff left to go around.’ And dwindling social safety nets, spiraling healthcare costs and constant pressures to perform amidst educational institutions and workplaces add untold stress to the mind which, by default, is already set up to fret and worry. After all, our brains have the same structure, regions and circuits as they did roughly 40 - 50,000 years ago, which was the last time we humans had an evolutionary transformation—and during those times the brain’s wiring was set up to survive each day without being eaten. You’d think we’d be calmer now that we’ve attained the dominant species status, but we’re living in the same cognitive set up, only we’ve replaced outrunning wild animals with the stresses of a go-for-the-gold rat race; an unfriendly expression on a supervisor’s face can ...