By Olga Kharif [BusinessWeek] -- Beneficial games, for everything from phobias to ADD, are starting to catch on. A computer game called The Journey to Wild Divine, combining elements of Buddhism, Christianity, and Kabbalah, teaches players to relax and relieve stress.

By Laura Johannes, The Wall Street Journal -- For the really Type A personality, here's a chance to measure how well you are relaxing. Makers of home biofeedback devices that monitor your heart rhythms say the devices teach you to combat emotional stress.

And so creative people tend to make the audience, a studio, their agent into a parent figure that they have to constantly appease or impress to maintain the connection, the emotional tie... You kind of do and you don’t [have to have a really big ego]... A friend of mine said, talking about writers, they’re egomaniacs with low self-esteem.

A flickering candle, the sound of surf, beating drums, psychotropic plants - those can all be seen as early “devices” for altering mental states and consciousness. Now, there is a wide range of much more sophisticated devices, software and smart drugs designed to enhance awareness and cognitive abilities, which may or may not work.

A study also found that 4 percent of students—and on some campuses, up to a whopping 25 percent—admitted to using drugs to improve academic performance. For people with attention-deficit disorder (ADD), stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall (a form of amphetamine) clearly improve intellectual performance. But do they boost brainpower for people without ADD—and if so, is such "cognitive enhancement" an appropriate use of these drugs?

Paraliminal learning sessions are audio CDs. Each one presents creative new ideas to help individuals overcome internal obstacles and achieve personal and professional goals. "Para" is the Latin prefix meaning "beyond". "Liminal" refers to the "limen" or "threshold" of conscious awareness. The term literally means, "beyond the threshold of conscious awareness". Supporting technologies include Suggestive-Accelerative Learning and Teaching Methods, Whole Brain Learning, Imagery, Suggestion, Relaxation and Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

How often have you heard someone boast that they had worked 70 hours last week? Were you impressed and envious or did you think the speaker was either exaggerating or inefficient? Why do some take pride in proving that their work is more effortful, difficult, or even painful than that of others? In too many cases, this need to feel indispensable comes at the expense of one’s health and happiness.

By Peter Julian, the Official Guide to Accelerated Learning at SelfGrowth.com -- When you read the words “accelerated learning,” what comes to mind? A bespectacled “brainiac”? A teenager receiving a Ph.D.? The fact is you don’t have to be a prodigy to experience the benefits of rapid learning. The purpose of this brief article is to give you a “quick and dirty” look at the subject of accelerated learning; what it is, the keys to making it work, and its exciting promise for the future.

A new study has found that it may be possible to train people to be more intelligent, increasing the brainpower they had at birth.

"My therapist gives me permission to accept that I'm human." Actor Claire Danes also explained, "I finally realized after years of therapy.. that you can encourage yourself to move further in a nurturing way." Taking care to "encourage yourself to move further" is, of course, something that people typically choose to manage on their own, but a counselor or therapist can help us do it more fully and effectively.