Q & A with Dr. B.

Dr. Larry Berkelhammer

The purpose of this website, my book, and the Community Education course I teach at the College of Marin, is to teach people how to live a vibrant, meaningful life through the cultivation of self-empowerment and self-efficacy. In this weekly Q&A column, I post questions from students and from people who attend my presentations along with my answers.

Here is this week’s question:

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION: Can cultivation of mindfulness, self-empowerment, and self-efficacy improve health?

ANSWER: By learning various practices that I teach in my In Your Own Hands class at College of Marin, people learn how to detect very subtle feelings and sensations before they get strong enough to create a negative mood or ill health. Using various methods, it becomes easy to objectively observe these phenomena and to no longer be negatively impacted by them. This reduction in emotional distress reduces physiological stress, which in turn improves physiological functioning.

This website is offered as a free public service, supplying information that has been found helpful to certain people living with chronic health challenges or issues related to wellbeing. No treatment is offered on this website. The advice is general, and may or may not apply to your individual situation, and is not a substitute for psychotherapy or medical treatment.

If you would like to ask me something, you can type your question in the comment box below. An answer to your specific question may not necessarily appear in this column. The reason for that is I wait until I get a certain number of related questions, then I pick one that covers them all and I answer that one.