The story we are typically told about aging is that it is a downward slope: we get older, weaker, frailer, and sicker. Upon seeing images of young yogis, an older person might think, I can’t do that. That’s not for me.
Sure, there are flexible young women in my yoga classes, but there’s also Kate, a beautiful white-haired woman with a steady and powerful practice; Don, an older gentleman with a daughter my age; and, of course, my mom, who is also my business partner at my...
Admit it: at times, we all can be a bit like the Princess and the Pea. Life can offer us so much goodness, but all we can do is get irritated by the few small things that don’t go smoothly. Frustrating, right? But there is an approach that we see reflected in nature that can help us. Here’s one way you may be able to turn your irritation into a pearl of wisdom.
We’ve all been there. We find ourselves so bothered by some experience in our day. Like when...
We all know the concept of looking at the world through “rose-colored glasses,” an accusation of being overly or unduly optimistic. But lately I’m observing that more often than not people are looking at the world through dirty windows.
I was doing some spring cleaning the other day and when I was done washing my windows, I was overwhelmed with how beautiful it was outside…as if the outside world had suddenly changed or gotten more stunning than it had...
The other night, my partner got a migraine. He was writhing in bed, ibuprofen scattered around the room, ice packs and hot water bottles strewn everywhere. I did what I do best in emergencies: research.
M.D. Baxter Bell writes that when a person gets stressed or upset, his neck and shoulders may tighten, putting the squeeze on the blood vessels trying to feed the brain. As a result, the body panics and dilates the arteries, suddenly shifting the blood...
The very title of this blog, “Spiritual Search,” puts doubt and open-mindedness at the center of our endeavor. Think about it. If we already know the answer, why even begin the search?
In our last installment, “Confessions of a Born-Again Agnostic,” I wrote about how much wisdom can be found in the simple statement “...
In February, my property on Maui, The Sacred Garden, was hit with a massive flash flood. Raining one to two inches an hour for several hours on already saturated ground caused monumental runoff as we watched the normally dry streambed rise. We then witnessed trees ripped out of the ground and washed downstream . . . and then, the eleven-circuit labyrinth that has hosted people from around the world on their personal pilgrimages, got completely engulfed and, brick by brick...
“The body never lies,” Janet Stone said in a workshop on the yogic concept of satya, or truth. “We misinterpret it, ignore it, and project our ideas onto it, but the body itself never lies.”
Our mouths sure do, though. Even if we don’t tell boldfaced lies, we all withhold aspects of the truth, revert quickly to what we want to believe rather than listening openly, we hide aspects of ourselves from others, and most of all, we lie to ourselves. And that’s okay:...
How many times during the day—if ever—do the following three words pass your lips? “I don’t know.” My answer to that question is “Not enough.”
Our culture—at least as it is expressed through religion, politics, and the media—places a premium on certainty. Turn on your television and start clicking across the media universe and you’ll soon find someone telling you Jesus is the only way. Click again and you’ll find pandering pundits playing the world’s foremost...
Oh, fire, what would we do without you?
On farms, crops do better after a fire has licked at the earth and burned off the top layer of old growth in the fields. In the forest, pinecone seeds only reveal themselves for fruition after fires transform the land to burnt ash and smoke, killing the parent trees and turning the shells of the cones to cinder. Somehow, all that survives is the seed, the potential of rebirth inherent in the plant, which had slept in the...
In honor of Mother’s Day and my own mother, who passed away of Lou Gehrig’s Disease, or ALS, eight years ago, I thought I would share the poem I wrote the morning she died.
A Journey In Listening
We were dependent on your loving words,
Your wise advice,
Your compassionate understanding.
We told you everything.
You told us everything.
We...
Though it seems a familiar formula for those on a spiritual path to rebuke money and keep things simple (many holy people have taken vows of poverty), I now wonder if it isn’t time for light workers, those doing the most healing work on the planet, to be unafraid to be the next billionaires.
It begs the question: Is it more “spiritual” to be poor? Should people who truly desire to serve the world take a vow of poverty? Or can being wealthy offer us its own...
What makes scripture “holy?”
Ask that question to a fundamentalist Christian, and the answer is simple. “The Bible is the literally the word of God,” some Christians will tell you. “It is historically accurate and without error.” Other Christians may have a more nuanced approach. “The Bible was written by men who were inspired by God,” a more liberal believer might say. “It’s not literally true, but often points to a higher truth.”
Secular...
The massage therapist slid her hand under my sacrum, and waited. I wasn’t sure what this was supposed to feel like and apparently nothing was happening.
“What do you feel?” she asked, keeping her hand still. I closed my eyes.
I felt as if my spine were spiraling away from her hand, curling and twitching towards the left, my shoulders rolling in, dizzy, as if I were spinning through the air. My jaw seemed to list to the left, like in the movies...
I bent over, lifted my left leg, and tried to quickly slide my foot into the thick black rubber fin with as much grace as I could muster. My right foot toed the small sheath of my flip flop, which teetered on a precarious patch of jagged black lava. I had an awkward gait, like that of a monk seal on land, ready at the slightest provocation to plop over onto my belly, grunting. Then I wiggled into the right fin with the same hurried action, the rubber pulling the hairs from my...
Anger: we all know it, many of us well. But at a yoga party, it would be gauche to bring up the raging intensity sitting in your gut. We’re all focusing on the positive here, right?
Not exactly. Yoga is in part a practice for life. It’s natural and normal to feel anger, and yoga can help us find the compassionate action that the anger is sometimes trying to point us toward.
Anger comes in different forms. Empowering anger is a galvanizing force: It has a clarity like a...
There’s an underground spiritual movement in the United States that has grown so quietly over the last few decades that you may not even know you’re part of it.
To find out if you’re part of this secret network, just answer the following question: “Are you currently involved in a small group that meets regularly and provides support and caring for those who participate in it?” If you answered “yes,” congratulations. You are part of the small group movement. More than 40 percent of...
The recent conversations about same-sex marriage have got me thinking. Someone on a talk show pointed out that the argument for “traditional marriages” was questionable, since marriage “traditions” of our not so distant past included a man’s obligation to marry his brother’s widow, arranged marriages for financial and political agreements, and a 60 percent divorce rate. It wasn’t until relatively recently that we married for love, and that doesn’t seem to be working out so well....
I live in a country where we drive on the right (not the correct, but literally the right) side of the road, and our cars have steering wheels located on the left side of our cars. And until this week I’d never driven any other way. Now I am visiting a country where they drive on the left side of the road, trying to be sure I position myself and my vehicle in the appropriate locale at all times.
When I first climbed behind the wheel, my instinct was to think...
“Now is the time to know that all you do is sacred.” ~Hafiz
Remember that moment on December 21st, 2012, when you wondered if just maybe the Mayans were right and the tides would suddenly rise to destroy the arrogant human race? And then nothing happened?
I remember how exciting it was to think about the possibility of a new world—one that marked an energetic shift, an intellectual, spiritual, and emotional awakening that was not only personal...
For some addicts, hitting bottom and having a spiritual awakening are the first steps along the path of recovery. That's why Alcoholics Anonymous, the oldest and largest of the twelve-step groups, calls itself a spiritual—rather than a religious—program.
Founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson, a New York stock market analyst, and Dr. Bob Smith, an Akron, Ohio, physician, AA is a fellowship of alcoholics who decided to "turn our will and our lives over to the care of...
