Soul's Code

How to have teeth as white as a Hollywood star — and take your dentist out of the equation

BY SOUL’S CODE — One of the themes of this site is exploring techniques and tools that do an end-run around insurance companies and the medical establishment. If there are things that you can do on your own to improve your physical and emotional well-being, why pay a psychiatrist, a hospital or a doctor exorbitant fees?

So we occasionally check out new products like our review of facial scanners that we nicknamed “New Age Botox” (they promised to make you look healthier without sticking a needle in your skin). Unfortunately, we didn’t think those ones worked very well, if at all.

But now we’ve found a new use-at-home product that displays dramatic results.

There’s no “girl power” in mobs. Men have a history of seeing war, revolution and disasters as foreplay for rape.

War creeps: Who put the “rape” in “rape and pillage?”

Where not to strut: In a mob, safety should trump defiance for the Lara Logans of the world.

Raging stats: Husbands are as bad as soldiers in the Congo.

Hey big spender: Researchers conclude size (of wallet) does matter.

Buried treasure: Six reasons why financial infidelity kills intimacy.

Survey says: Fool around, fine – but don’t lie to me about money.

The Americanization of yoga; Stephen Hawking on aliens (again); Charlie Sheen and addiction (again); Higher sex-ed learning goes Charlie Sheen

Insert knowledge here: Three Methodist ministers who founded Northwestern University probably didn’t expect the school’s Human Sexuality class to get so hands-on.

Proprietary positions: Yoga’s mainstream conversion is transforming gurus into go-getters.

Out of habit: New techno gadget gives cloistered nuns a peak at pertinent prayer topics in the real world

If trust is about truth, no wonder we find it more difficult to look into each other’s eyes than to have sex together

BY DAVID RICKEY – In Woody Allen’s latest film of dysfunction, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, Gemma Jones’ character says, “My husband walked out on me for one simple reason. I was too honest with him. I refused to allow him to delude himself.”

Truth, lies, seeing, blindfolding . . . having too much of one, and too little of the other, can tip the scales in a relationship, destroying trust.

Trust is really a question of energy flow.

When I truly love you, my energy flows positively out toward you. When I trust you, I believe that your energy will flow positively toward me.

Black Swan shows the best and worst extremes of art and letting go

BY MICHELLE MORRA-CARLISLE – As the closing credits for Black Swan started rolling, the woman I was sitting next to turned to me and said, “Weird, eh?”

Yes, the darling ballerina who first graced the screen had gone off the artistic deep end. There comes a point in Black Swan where everyone in the theatre realizes it’s more than just a movie about an angst-ridden dancer. We fidget, uncomfortably bracing ourselves for what’s next.

Natalie Portman’s character, Nina Sayers, is a disciplined dancer whose entire focus is on keeping it together. That means being sweet enough to keep her unstable and manipulative mother (Barbara Hershey) from unraveling, quiet enough not to elicit the wrath of her catty fellow dancers, and having full control over her every ballet move. That self-discipline makes her the ideal White Swan for Swan Lake – her big break – but her choreographer Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) doubts her ability to embody the sensual darkness of the Black Swan. In a grueling rehearsal, the sexy and cruel Thomas says, “Perfection is not just about control. It’s also about letting go.”

Senators’ spooky shenanigans; doctors shun celebrities but praise Alcoholics Anonymous; Lady Gaga tops do-gooder list; former cross-dresser cures homosexuality

Big Boys’ God club: Jeff Sharlet’s book, C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy tells of US politicians’ scary underground religion.

The pretty people are wrong: Doctors debunk what celebrities say are the secrets to a healthy life.

Most philanthropic celebrity: If ‘doing good’ is in, Gaga is inner than Oprah.

A real hockey mom shares her search for exercise that tunes her body and soul.

BY MICHELLE MORRA-CARLISLE — I am not tough. If a gang of men with sticks repeatedly pelted me with a rock-hard projectile you might find me on the ground in the fetal position, pleading with them to stop.

What I actually mean by that is that, unlike Sarah Palin, I am a real hockey mom. I live in Canada. And when I first saw my husband play goal and assume the iconic, fearless “bring it on” stance, I was in awe. As well-rounded as I consider myself to be, in that moment I saw that in my non-athletic development I had missed out on something important.

The fittest of the fit are sublimely aware that for the mind to be in optimal shape, so must the body, and vice versa.

In 2010 America, we all live in a world that is 90 % mad: The most fascinating show on TV’s sly commentary on our current mental health

BY PAUL KAIHLA —  On October 1, 2010, the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) released a survey of the most recent data on depression — and the results were, well, depressing. One in ten Americans suffered from that mental illness as the economy careened into the current recession.

But what surprised many researchers, especially at pioneering psych departments like that at Stanford University, is that the statistic was not higher. According to Stanford neuro-psych Viveka Ramel, about half of us in North America will suffer from a clinical disorder of some kind during our lifetime — and for a fifth of us, that diagnosis will be depression.

A brilliant reflection of our current economic and spiritual health, and how those macro forces course through our personal psycho-dynamics, is on display this fall on the AMC cable channel series, Mad Men. The show’s writers — some of the same people who brought you the hit HBO show, The Sopranos — frame their mise-en-scene in the emerging New York megapolitan of the 1960′s, riven by characters who are careerists on Madison Avenue.

Casting this story in the past gives us just enough comfort-zone to look at ourselves in our present-tense, and make no mistake: Mad Men is a commentary on *our* anxious, over-politicized and publicized times.

“In relationships most people are so afraid that there actually is no relationship.”

BY TONY SAMARA — I have worked in spiritual camps by the beach where everyone is dressed up in lovely Indian flowing clothes — or lack of them — and this has very interesting reactions in the men and women that are there. The whole situation becomes one full of beautiful people walking around and the mind wanders off into imaginary scenarios that have nothing to do with union. It is all coming out of desire.

In our society, sexuality is based on desire. It is a desirable thing to be in a relationship. It is a desirable thing to be in connection with someone who is beautiful and who fulfils emotional parts that make you feel happy, joyful, ecstatic, infatuated or whatever the feeling is at that time.

Union is very different.