Helpful Resources

Community-Based Programs for First Responders:

Mental Health Recovery Resources:

TED Talks:

Annotated Bibliography:

  • Katie, B., & Mitchell, S. (2021). Loving What Is, Revised Edition: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life. Harmony.

    In 2003, Byron Katie introduced the world to The Work by publishing Loving What Is. Nearly twenty years later, Loving What Is continues to inspire people all over the world to do The Work; to listen to the answers they find inside themselves; and to open their minds to profound, spacious, and life-transforming insights. The Work is simply four questions that, when applied to a specific problem, enable you to see what is troubling you in an entirely different light. Katie freely shares her worksheets with readers on her website.

  • Brach, T. (2003). Radical Acceptance: Embracing your life with a heart of a Buddha. Bantam.

    Tara Brach, Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, blends Western psychology and Eastern spiritual practices, mindful attention to our inner life, and a full, compassionate engagement with our world. The result is a distinctive voice in Western Buddhism, offering a wise and caring approach to freeing ourselves and society from suffering. Tara is training psychotherapists on integrating mindfulness strategies into their clinical work. In 1998, Tara founded the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC (IMCW), one of the largest and most dynamic non-residential meditation centers in the United States.

  • Brach, T. (2020). Radical compassion: Learning to love yourself and your world with the practice of RAIN. Penguin.

    Tara Brach, Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, wrote a deeply practical book; she offers an antidote: an easy-to-learn four-step meditation that quickly loosens the grip of difficult emotions and limiting beliefs. Each step in the meditation practice (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) is brought to life by memorable stories shared by Tara and her students as they deal with feelings of overwhelm, loss, and self-aversion, with painful relationships, and past trauma–and as they discover step-by-step the sources of love, forgiveness, compassion, and deep wisdom alive within all of us.

  • Brewer, J. (2021). Unwinding anxiety: New science shows how to break the cycles of worry and fear to heal your mind. Penguin Random House LLC.

Jud Brewer, M.D., Ph.D., and neuroscientist, designed a program to break unhealthy habits at www.unwindinganxiety.com. His solution is simple. When an unhealthy obsession arises, like smoking or emotional eating, he recommends noticing it, getting curious, letting go, and consciously creating a new anxiety-coping habit, e.g., light breathing or prayer. Dr. Brewer gave a TED talk, "A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit,” in 2016. 

  • Bulsiewicz, W. (2020). Fiber fueled. Penguin Random House LLC.

Will Bulsiewicz, M.D., and gastroenterologist, reiterated that all diseases begin in the gut (Hippocrates 460-370 BC). About 39 trillion gut bacteria control metabolism, hormones, inflammation, and the immune system. Fiber provides prebiotics for microbiota, aka probiotics that produce waste called postbiotics. These powerhouse probiotics produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) in the colon during fermentation. SCFAs promote weight loss, prevent cancer, reverse DMII, improve brain function, repair leaky gut, and lower cholesterol. Dysbiosis happens when a bad gut microbiome outweighs good gut bacteria. Dr. Bulsiewicz advocates for biodiversity diets and quotes Hippocrates: "Let thy food be thy medicine." Dr. B is a U.S. Medical Director for Zoe.

  • Greger, M. (2015). How not to die: Discover the foods scientifically proven to prevent and reverse disease. Flatiron Books.

Michael Greger, M.D., created the daily dozen list of foods that can help to prevent common deadly diseases. Dr. Greger created a website called nutritionfacts.org that contains his research reviews. 

He organized foods according to their nutritional value as follows:

1.   Green foods (e.g., unprocessed veggies and fruits).

2.   Yellow foods (e.g., processed peanut butter).

3.   Red foods (ultra-processed foods such as lunch meats and chips).

  • Gupta, S. (2021). Keep sharp: How to build a better brain at any age. Simon & Schuster.

Sanjay Gupta, M.D., proposed five pillars to keep the brain healthy: 1) Food, 2) Exercise, 3) Learn new things, 4) Socialize, and 5) Sleep.

  • Naidoo, U. (2020). This is your brain on food: An indispensable guide to the surprising foods that fight depression, anxiety, PTSD, OCD, ADHD, etc. Little Brown Spark.

    Uma Naidoo, M.D., chef, and nutritional psychiatrist from Harvard Medical School, created a guide to promote healthy brain-gut axis crosstalk connection. She clarified the relationship between the vagus nerve, microbiome, and autonomic nervous system, i.e., parasympathetic and sympathetic. One of her recommendations for better sleep is to have breakfast for dinner. Serotonin and dopamine are excreted in the gut. Some of the benefits of having chocolate are boosted production of serotonin, endorphins, dopamine and increased blood flow to the brain. Dr. Naidoo elaborated on how stress impairs digestion. 

  • Ornish, D., & Ornish, A. (2019). Undo it: How simple lifestyle changes can reverse most chronic diseases. Ballantine Books. 

According to Ornish Lifestyle Medicine, there are four elements of a healthy lifestyle:

1.   Eating well, i.e., a whole-food, plant-based diet naturally low in fat and sugar and high in flavor

2.   Moving more, i.e., moderate exercise daily

3.   Stressing less, i.e., meditation and gentle yoga

4.   Loving more, i.e., intimacy

  • Storoni, M. (2017). Stress-Proof: The scientific solution to protect your brain and body – and be more resilient every day. Penguin Random House LLC.

Mithu Storoni, M.D., Ph.D., suggested doing something distracting when something stressful happens, e.g., dancing, cooking, or going for a walk.