The patron saint of ecology, Francis d’Assisi’s love of nature, and new ways of living together set forth by the eminent neuropsychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik Living in times of an unstoppable disease pervading the earth, it has become imperative to peruse our fragile relation with nature, and to collectively revive our old values says the eminent neuropsychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik : Crises are very common in the human condition. We have already known many epidemics which have forced cultural revolutions… With each epidemic, or natural disaster, there has been a cultural change. After the trauma, we are forced to discover new …
Year: 2021
Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art. The exceptional artist and polymath, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), driven by his rigorous quest for knowing the human body, spirit, and its place in the universe, dedicated his life to display his findings through art. His gift for art along with his profound knowledge in anatomy, botany, mathematics, engineering and physics are reflected in the corpus of his work. He always carried a notebook in which he drew his sharp observations with precision and artistic mastery. His scientific findings and aesthetic conceptions are preserved in nearly …
The myth has it that long long time ago, a big contest was going to be held for winning the patronage of the city of Athens and its surrounding territory, Attica. The contest was to take place under the presiding witness of King Cecrops, the founder of Athens. The crowd gathered at the Temple of Parthenon which rose on the rocky hilltop overlooking the city of Athens. The two candidates of the glorious contest were Athena, the goddess of justice, wisdom and war skills, and Poseidon, the god of the seas. To win the guardianship of the city, Athena and …
“We are obliged to change and rethink the whole civilization,” says Boris Cyrulnik, the eminent neuropsychiatrist known for his work on resilience and trauma. Our culture has lost the compass, we navigate by sight, jostled by events […] We must take a new direction because we have just understood that man is not above nature, he is in nature. Physically, psychologically and spiritually we are much more sculpted than we think by our natural space. He focuses on healing the soul in his latest book, Souls and Seasons, and marks “psychological ecology” as the crucial component of the remedy …
There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres. Pythagoras (circa 570 BC), the sage philosopher and polymath was born on the Greek island of Samos. Renown by his fundamental theory of mathematics and his studies on the pre-existing link between music and mathematics, he demystified the music of the planets of our solar system which he defined as musica universalis – the music of the spheres. Attesting to the fact that the planets and stars move according to mathematical equations, their movement correspond to musical notes and each emit their …
“We are routine beings, and arguably even more so at this time. And this is normal, although our brain likes to be surprised, it needs routine to avoid overheating, ” states Valentin Wyart, the acclaimed neuroscientist of École Normale Supérieure of France. Even more so nowadays, the routine allows us to structure ourselves when we have just spent a highly unstructured year with difficulties in planning. He affirms the restorative quality of routine in one’s daily life : These routines that we put in place allow at least the projection in the very short term: knowing what we are going …
One of the most read and quoted Persian poets of the 13th century, Mevlâna Mohammad Jalal al-dîn Rumi, known as Rumi was a savant and mystic. Born in Balkh region, today’s Afghanistan (1207-1273), he and his family moved to Konya, Turkey after the Mongol conquest. Soon after his settlement in Konya, mystics, and Sufi dervishes gathered around him to benefit from his spiritual and intellectual knowledge. The spiritual life was embedded in the daily material life of the dervishes. Their gatherings were accompanied by spiritual music and dancing. It is during this period he is called “ Mevlâna” – meaning …
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