for health? Whole, real, unprocessed foods Wild regeneratively-raised or grass- or pasture-raised meats and eggs and fatty fish Fiber Phytonutrients Micronutrients (e.g., vitamin D, zinc, magnesium, B vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids) Optimal hormone levels (supported by healthy lifestyle or bio identical hormone replacement) Adequate and ideal light exposure at the right times of day Optimal hydration Clean air Exercise and movement Restorative practices (yoga, meditation, breath work) Sleep and health circadian rhythms Community, love, and belonging Meaning and purpose By adding the good stuff and removing the bad, you activate your body&rsqu... posted on Mar 2 2023 (4,326 reads)

the idea of kindness — loves thinking of themselves as a kind person — but somehow, the practice of it, the dailiness of it, has receded into the background in a culture rife with selfing and cynicism, a culture in which we have come to mistake the emotional porousness of kindness for a puncture in the armor of our hard individualism. And yet kindness remains our best antidote to the fundamental loneliness of being human. Gathered here are two millennia of meditations on kindness — its challenges, its nuances, and its rippling rewards — from a posy of vast minds and vast spirits who have risen above the common tide of their times to give us ... posted on Mar 18 2023 (4,421 reads)

more social rest, surround yourself with positive and supportive people. Even if your interactions have to occur virtually, you can choose to engage more fully in them by turning on your camera and focusing on who you’re speaking to. The final type of rest is spiritual rest, which is the ability to connect beyond the physical and mental and feel a deep sense of belonging, love, acceptance and purpose. To receive this, engage in something greater than yourself and add prayer, meditation or community involvement to your daily routine. As you can see, sleep alone can’t restore us to the point we feel rested. So it’s time for us to begin focusing on getting the... posted on Mar 21 2023 (14,611 reads)

Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus (2022) by Neil Douglas-Klotz. For a longer excerpt and more information, please see: www.revelationsofthearamaicjesus.com Why consider Jesus’ sayings in this language, much less use them in prayer or meditation? Language determines our way viewing the world. Languages have different words for the same thing, but also unique words that cannot be put into words in another language. In ancient languages, these unique expressions were all about the way people perceived their relationships to nature, other human beings, and Reality itself (a reality often translated “God”). Aramaic offers a way of looking at life as an inter... posted on Mar 22 2023 (3,654 reads)

I went by myself and I had a shaved head and this whole gnarly scar. It’s a nine-day pilgrimage. Toward the end, we were in thee big groups to visit Bahá’u’lláh’s prison cell. He was imprisoned for years. I was really excited, for whatever reason, to visit that cell, more than any other spot. We got there and it was a stormy day and I just had a really deep desire in my heart to be alone in this prison cell. We’d have time for prayer and meditation, and I was with this group, and these people, they would have these prayer-a-thons. They would be able to hunker down for an hour and a half or something. And I didn’t have that type ... posted on Apr 1 2023 (4,297 reads)

that fire together wire together.” Thus, the brain can learn to trigger the same neurons each time and gradually wire them together. Using this Hebbian theory, we can change the brain for the better by reveling in pleasant events a handful of times a day—pausing to listen to the sounds of birds chirping, relishing a bite of food or a good cup of coffee, smelling a flower, or enjoying a pleasant thought about a loved one.  “No drugs, nothing fancy, no exotic meditation technique needed,” says Hanson. “You begin to move from moments of gratitude to the trait of gratitude, moments of self-worth to the trait of self-worth, and this is a profoundl... posted on Apr 18 2023 (25,758 reads)

suspect our ability to ask the unanswerable questions that Hannah Arendt knew are the heartbeat of civilization is intimately related to our capacity for dwelling in a particular state of being beyond the realm of our compulsive doing. Bertrand Russell called it “fruitful monotony.” Adam Phillips called it “fertile solitude.” Walt Whitman called it “loafing.” The Buddhist tradition describes it simply as presence. Whatever we may call it, amid a culture of filling the existential void with cultish productivity and an endless stream of dopamine-laced distractions, it is nothing less than a countercultural act of courage and r... posted on Apr 20 2023 (4,853 reads)

I think I’d just like to end with a few more poems. Limón:Yeah. Tippett:Because I couldn’t decide which ones I wanted you to read. We haven’t read much from The Carrying, which is a wonderful book. Okay, I’m going to give you some choices. Why don’t you read “The Quiet Machine”? Actually, that’s in Bright Dead Things. This is like a self-care poem. I almost think that this poem could be used as a meditation. Limón:I think it’s definitely a writing prompt too, right? There’s a lot of different… People… Tippett:It’s page 13, sorry. Limón:Oh,... posted on Apr 22 2023 (3,165 reads)

bodily guidance or internal wisdom. By that, I mean the opposite of “move fast and break things.” I used to live a good chunk of my life right here (in my head) and to ignore the residue or the intelligence that was building up elsewhere in my whole being. In a world that is speeding up exponentially, it’s critical to slow down our external work long enough so as to feel the body and attune to the subtle energetic signs that something is out of whack – whether through meditation, movement, or simple silence. As we know, our bodies keep the score of internal misalignments. A few weeks ago, I was at this powerful talk by a renowned person who was speaking abou... posted on May 30 2023 (2,736 reads)

of the day a remnant of satisfaction and a touch of coexistence with nature. Gradually and without effort the eye trains itself to transmit many small delights, to contemplate nature and the city streets, to appreciate the inexhaustible fun of daily life. From there on to the fully trained artistic eye is the smaller half of the journey; the principal thing is the beginning, the opening of the eyes. In a sentiment which Annie Dillard would come to echo many decades later in her beautiful meditation on reclaiming our capacity for joy and wonder, Hesse adds: A stretch of sky, a garden wall overhung by green branches, a strong horse, a handsome dog, a group of children, a beaut... posted on Jul 2 2023 (5,805 reads)

of our attention have changed.  People are enormously alert, say, to movie techniques or computer systems. It’s not that it’s flabby or out of shape, it is that most contemporary uses of seeing, I fear—especially in our culture, American culture, western culture— mainly involve a quick naming of what we see. I fear that we are losing those slower ways of seeing the thing as it is, in reality, out there.  Other ways of seeing—for example, through meditation in Eastern cultures—are not part of ordinary American life. I believe this is one reason why, after our students have learned to draw, they often tell me, “Life seems so m... posted on Jul 9 2023 (2,594 reads)

Lincoln wrote in his immensely insightful letter of consolation to a bereaved friend, the agony of loss is slowly transmuted into “a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before”; a transmutation in which skillful loving support can make a world of difference — support very different from what we instinctively imagine helps. Art by Valerio Vidali from The Shadow Elephant by Nadine Robert — a subtle meditation on what it actually takes to unblue our sorrows. In studying how people navigate intense grief — the loss of loved ones to violent crime, suicide, disaster, infant death, and oth... posted on Aug 13 2023 (6,530 reads)

error, and reflection represented in this volume is given short shrift by academic scholars, medical researchers, educators, and funders.  Schools of embodiment practices are relegated to new age self-help techniques, in a dismal sometimes abetted by practitioners within the field who are unaware of the full riches of their own heritage. Search widespread failures to grasp the full meaning of these practices are similar to misunderstandings encountered by teachers of ancient systems of meditation and the martial arts.  Tai chi chuan, acupuncture, hatha yoga, and vipassana, for example, are ancient complex systems of educating many aspects of the person.  they include menta... posted on Sep 17 2023 (2,331 reads)

Sue Cochrane's website is a button that says "Click Here for Unconditional Love"- it leads to a selection of writings that offer exactly that. It isn't just the words of Sue's stories that touch the reader, but the wordless energy behind them. Sue Cochrane survived a traumatic childhood to become a pioneering family court judge. Throughout her career she strived to put the heart back into the body of the law. Her first stark cancer diagnosis came when her three adopted sons were little more than babies. In the eighteen years that followed, Sue lived and loved through a series of profoundly serious diagnoses, including Stage IV breast cancer, and a brain tumor that wa... posted on Oct 31 2023 (53,491 reads)

most sacred thing, is that whichever the outcome, we end up having transformed one another in this vulnerable-making process of speaking and listening. Why and how we do that is what Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929–January 22, 2018) explores in a magnificent piece titled “Telling Is Listening” found in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination (public library), which also gave us her spectacular meditations on being a man and what beauty really means. Ursula K. Le Guin by Benjamin Reed In the spirit of Kurt Vonnegut’s diagrams of the shapes of stories, Le... posted on Nov 13 2023 (2,979 reads)

shall I walk, or should I ride?” “Ride,” Pleasure said. “Walk,” Joy replied. In his 1914 poem The Best Friend, the Welsh poet and occasional vagabond W.H. Davies pondered a timeless question: “Now shall I walk, or should I ride?” This seemingly simple dilemma encapsulates the modern industrial choice between slow-paced ageless wandering on foot or embracing the thrill of motorized transport, along with the attendant speed and freedom it offers, which has become such an integral part of our contemporary lifestyle. It likewise speaks volumes about us and about the nature of the choices we make daily. Gone perha... posted on Nov 22 2023 (2,378 reads)

study for The Spirit of Light, Edwin Austin Abbey, 1989. To step across the threshold with courage and openheartedness is to honor the truth and sanctity of our experience, of our light — it is to bless ourselves: The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of experience, we are true to God. Complement with a blind hero of the French resistance on how to live in light, a Baldwin-lensed meditation on the light between us, and David Whyte’s “Blessing for the Light,” inspired by John O’Donohue, then revisit O’Donohue on why we fall in love&n... posted on Dec 11 2023 (5,758 reads)

Songs of Trees reminds us that we're not alone and never have been. Below are highlights of Haskell's insights shared during our conversation. About His First Book The Forest Unseen: That project was a place where I tried to integrate different strands of my life, so part of my life was as a teacher and as a scientist sharing ecological stories with my students, and then trying to understand those a little more deeply through my own research. I also had a practice of meditation of just being being quiet for several times a day, and also I just took great deal of enjoyment in walking in the forest and opening my senses without any particular goal in mind, and so fo... posted on Jan 7 2024 (4,932 reads)

to yourself. Notice the feelings you’re focusing on and the perceptions you’re holding in mind. Try to bring these things together in a good way: Breathe in a way that’s nourishing. Talk to yourself in a way that’s nourishing. If the chatter in the mind weighs you down, pulls you down, blames everything on things outside, you’ve got to counteract it. Find new ways of talking to yourself.This is one of the reasons why we have the chants at the beginning of the meditation: goodwill for all beings, goodwill for ourselves, reflections on aging, illness, and death, and the fact that they are normal and that the survival of the body is not the be-all and end-all... posted on Apr 8 2024 (2,997 reads)

movements, to the prophetic ministry, the gay rights movements started there. They recently have been doing a lot of work with the sanctuary movement for immigrants. There we even had a minister who used to go around Times Square and offer cookies to the prostitutes so that he could talk to them about their human rights. There is this whole history in this one church of being socially active for justice. But they didn't have much about spirituality. They didn't talk about it. They didn't have meditation classes. They didn't have, we had prayer of course, but they didn't really have any kind of emphasis upon the contemplative life or the spiritual life.And after we wrote about spiritual lit... posted on May 5 2024 (2,551 reads)