sarahmccrum's comments

Try listening to any of the materials here - www.oceen.com. Even if they are not exactly on the topic of depression they will all help. There's always something free on the home page. They will help you 'do nothing' in a constructive way that makes you feel better.

At first the effect will probably be short-lived - a little burst of energy and motivation. If you listen to one of them every day this will build up and become more stable.

Depression is essentially lack of energy/motivation. As soon as you get a bit more fuel into your system you feel less depressed. It's caused by many things which are not your fault in any way, but you do have the ability to overcome it.

We plan to make a series of materials (on the same site) specifically for depression, so let me know if you'd like to be a guinea pig.

I used to sleep 8 to 9 hours a night, and often could have slept more, until I learned how to relax and recharge my energy. Now I need around 4 to 6 hours (absolute max) and I never feel tired, even if I work late, 7 days a week etc etc.

Over the last 12 years, when I have worked with many people with a wide range of sleep problems, I have discovered that the problem is not in fact that we do not get enough sleep. I think that with the expectations we put on ourselves these days it is almost impossible to get enough sleep. I found that sleep (and food and the other methods we use) is simply not powerful enough to recharge our batteries properly.

Probably 50 years ago it was enough to eat 3 meals a day, sleep 8 hours a night, have weekends and a few weeks holidays every year and so on. My grandfather used to work in the City of London (financial district) and they went to the office in the morning, had a long, sociable lunch and didn't do much else for the rest of the day. Look at bankers and other financial people today and there is simply no comparison. So I believe it will become more and more essential for people to find ways of recharging their energy that are much more powerful than sleep, holidays etc. That's why we are seeing an increase in the number of people meditating, doing yoga and lots of other practices that build energy levels as well as rest.

Well I for one would rather read a few comments than such a huge long detailed page of script. But I have to say that having scanned the whole page and picked up the key points (I think), it seems to me that the key to the influence on our brains of the internet, or indeed books or any other source of information, is the content itself. I once made a series of radio features for the BBC about children's perceptions of crime. One thing has stayed in my memory - children talking about the impact of watching the news over breakfast. They told me that this left them often shaking with nerves because the focus of the news was so negative - not a good start to the day.

I know that if I start reading lots of bad news when I am feeling really good it has an instant impact on my mood. Recently when I got temporarily gripped by the news about the earthquakes in Christchurch I found myself reacting negatively to completely different things and I couldn't understand why, because I had been feeling really good. It was only the next day, when I went back to the news again and the same thing happened, that I figured out what was going on. This is not because I was worried about the news itself (however shocking it was) but because it was fundamentally bad news, and we react to that emotionally usually without even realising it.

It seems to me that it is more important to focus on what kind of material we spend time on, whether on computers,in books or elsewhere, and consequently what kind of thoughts and feelings we have during the day, rather than whether it is computers themselves that are having the effect. Although sitting looking at a screen all day definitely has an effect on other things like eyesight, so why not the brain too?

As a little aside Bruce Liptom showed that unborn babies experience all the mother's emotions, which sets up many of their main emotional patterns in life. So watch out, mothers-to-be on the internet! You may be affecting your baby's brain.

My big question is about the difference between this kind of body pummelling exercise and gentler types of exercise such as the Chinese have done for millennia to promote longevity. I don't think the Chinese live longer than Americans or europeans, but then most of them don't do their traditional exercise styles any more. But i know that the feeling you get after an hour of Chinese-style exercise is so much fresher and more invigorating than after strong western style exercise. In my experience western style exercise circulates your energy (which is really good for you) and also drains it but Chinese exercise actually boosts your energy as well as circulating it. This is only based on personal experience - no science, but it would be worth investigating more seriously for anyone interested in longevity.

It seems that the world would only need a handful of teachers to provide all the basic (and I mean basic) education anyone ever needs. Then we could all concentrate on developing our personal potential, individual talents and performing to the very high levels most of us would be capable of if we could only have enough time. They say it takes 8,000 hours of anything to become an expert. That's never going to happen in a modern school with a curriculum crammed full of obsolete knowledge and subjects. but if we had more experts around who had more time to teach children, the sky's the limit.

I once had an employer who seemed (to me) to prefer people who were (in my opinion) pretty inappropriate for their jobs because they had so little ability to do them. I found it very difficult to understand at the time, because I generally like to have people around who are better than me at most things, so I can concentrate on what I do best.

It was interesting over the years, though, to see what happened. That particular employer was a great believer that anyone can learn anything, and she was incredibly patient with some people who really were not gifted at all in their area of work.

Above all she valued loyalty (and in key areas, such as finance, she preferred absolute stupidity). I learned a lot from her. I saw that most of the clever people who were around left, often when they were most needed, whereas the slower, more loyal people were still there getting the job done. I also learned that loyalty and commitment are more valuable than brilliance. I saw that she liked stupid people in sensitive areas because then they couldn't mess up in any serious way. They made lots of small mistakes but they didn't have the ability to make big mistakes and they always asked whenever they didn't understand what they were doing.

Personally I think there is a balance here. I would find it hard to go as far as she did, but it certainly caused me to look at people decisions in a different way, which I would never have come up with if I hadn't seen her in action.