I am in the midst of a 10-week meditation program called "The Presence Process." This is my second go round, the first being 4 years ago, and it's interesting to note how different it is for me this time. The program begins with reading about 140 pages of text meant to help set up for the experience. Once this is...
Our sense of who we are, and where we fit in the world, is shaped by both nature and by nurture; genetic/physical factors as well ass emotional ones. There a consistently churning cultural tug of war in regards to which factor is more powerful in terms of sculpting our personalities and predilections. This debate is one that often shifts and...
Starting at birth, as we go through life, we begin to build up a library of significant dates in our lives. These anniversaries grow in number each year, and as we move through the world - growing physically, intellectually and emotionally - our relationships to these dates shift and change as well. When we are young, birthdays, especially our own,...
My mother loved the beach. I love the beach as well, and I just got out the ocean at 10am this morning, the day before the first anniversary of her death. I have felt this anniversary coming in my body for the past few weeks. I’ve been tight and sore and I know that it’s related to things that I...
Coincidences often have to do with something we are thinking about. On Friday night, I felt like drawing and after I drew a picture, I realized that I had been inspired to do it because I had found an old Sleepyhead single that a friend had asked me for. It was one that I had drawn the cover for, and...
On Monday I woke up meditating on being an orphan; at least thinking about what it meant to have lost that earthly connection to both of my parents. My dad died 14 years ago and Monday was his birthday. My mother died about 10 and a half months earlier. I was not so successful at processing the grief of my...
About a year and a half ago, a month after my 50th birthday, I started to practice yoga. My first class was an intermediate one and it was humbling, not because I went in with expectation, but because it was so far beyond my scope of ability. Yet, it was also grounding, and I needed that in that moment. I...
In the past 3 years of work around distributing “All The Rage” I have interacted with thousands of people in regards to mind body emotion issues. I’ve also continued to do a lot of work to become more aware of my own mind body issues and I feel like I have continued to slowly and steadily move down the path...
This morning I was thinking a lot about the idea of "accepting things as they are." It can be very difficult to conceptualize what this means, or how to do it. For me, it involves becoming more present with how my expectations for how things might go shape my reactions to them as they play out. In general these expectations...
Fear often keeps us stuck in ways that we don’t really understand, and aren’t fully conscious of. If we live in a fear mindset, as many people with mind-body issues do, then we are in a state of constantly seeking safety. Often times when we live in a state of general fear, we aren’t even aware of it, because it...
Rage is a very complicated emotion that is commonly understood as a part of our flight or flight response to the world; we go into a rage as a defensive move in order to protect ourselves from danger. However, danger is subjective. While we can all agree that running into a bear in the woods is dangerous, we don't all...
This afternoon we had a little personal graduation ceremony for our daughter outside of our home with some friends. I gave a short speech about ritual and transitions that I wanted to share here. Her speech was great and we are very proud of her. I grew up in this house and I graduated from high school over 30 years ago....