by Arjun Walia, Collective Evolution

Summer may be a long way off, but it’s never too early to start thinking about protecting your skin. For most people, this means covering themselves in sunscreen, which corporate marketing campaigns encourage at every turn. Yet, while we do indeed need protection to prevent sunburns, blocking out the sun entirely is not ideal. Rich in vitamin D, it offers a number of other health benefits, including, oddly enough, cancer prevention. We’ve been made to fear the sun, and, as a result, adults and children are choosing to drench themselves in a bath of toxic, hormone-disrupting chemicals.

by Alexa Erickson, Collective Evolution

A massive undersea earthquake devastated the Japanese coast in March, 2011. As the world watched on in terror and horror, a tsunami forced Tokyo Electric Power Company-operated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant offline.

The consequences of having placed a nuclear facility near one of the world’s most active fault zones soon became a major topic of discussion. According to a Japanese Parliamentary panel tasked with investigating the disaster, Fukushima was a “profoundly man-made disaster” that was “the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by said parties.”

The radioactive impact seemed immediate, yet six years later, the damage has yet to fully be assessed.

by Alanna Ketler, Collective Evolution

Are you new to the wonderful world of crystals? Has something drawn you to them, and do you have an incredible urge to collect as many as possible, but have no idea where to begin? There are thousands of different crystals and stones with many different properties in existence, and aside from being very beautiful, they all hold tremendous healing potential.

In the past, I never really understood crystals. I had friends who would hold them and immediately begin to feel their “power” or properties, saying things like, “Oh wow, this one feels very energetic,” or “This one is a very loving, protective stone,” etc. While I believed in the potential power of crystals, I felt as though I was not intuitive enough to feel it, or my friends  were exaggerating, or perhaps that crystals only worked for certain people.

by Collective Evolution

Do you see green the same way that I see green? Every now and then, we find ourselves wondering such questions, as we have all come to know and agree on the use of generic colour names like blue, yellow, green, and so on to distinguish and analyze life around us. Surely, we are all unique in the way we view colours to a degree, but at the end of the day, green is green, and so we leave it at that. But not everyone is quite like this.

After searching for more than 25 years, neuroscientists in the UK have come across a woman who has an extra type of cone cell — the receptor cells that detect colour — in her eyes. This means she can see a whopping 99 million more colours than the rest of us, and belongs to a very small group of people with super-vision called “tetrachromats.”

The majority of humans, referred to as “trichromats,” have three types of cone cells in their eyes, with each one thought to be able to distinguish around 100 shades. Together, our three cone cells can distinguish roughly 1 million different colours. Those who are colour blind, however, only have two functioning types of cone cells.

by Arjun Walia, Collective Evolution

The concept of Karma, which dates back thousands of years, is taught by various cultures throughout human history. Despite its proliferance, the idea of karma seems to be generally misunderstood and frequently tossed around without any real understanding of its true meaning.

What is Karma?

In the Bhagavad Gita (one text out of many from multiple cultures that speak of Karma), there are constant dialogues about how to attain what’s referred to as “moksha,” which is the release from the cycle of rebirth. It is a sort of transcendent state or freedom from the world we currently know — a world in which our senses deceive us. It’s a state of bliss that can only be attained when we have freed ourselves from the web of karma. Once we reach that point, our soul is ready to move on to another experience that goes beyond rebirth.