My two young grandsons—three and six years old—are enthralled by animals. Their enthusiasm is infectious, and now my interest in the innumerable fascinating creatures that share our planet matches theirs. No matter how many hours we spend reading together, we can’t make a dent in all there is to learn. In fact, no one knows how many species exist on earth.
Read MoreToday I’m sharing an article I wrote for Spirituality & Health magazine about the many benefits qigong offers, especially in relation to stress management. Because Qigong enhances my life in so many ways, I want to share its gifts with as many people as possible.
Read MoreMany of us on a quest to live more peacefully and joyfully have discovered the benefits of examining the beliefs and coping mechanisms we developed when we were young and vulnerable. Looking inward, we often find a frightened inner child banished to our subconscious, seemingly frozen in time.
Read MoreIt takes courage to be a human alive on planet earth. Everything we grow to love and rely on is always changing, and we can’t hang on to any of it forever, no matter how desperately we try. One reason I’m drawn to Buddhist philosophy is that it addresses the issue of impermanence head-on, explaining how much of our suffering comes from clinging to our desires and rejecting the truth of life as it actually is.
Read MoreEveryone has been emotionally wounded. No one makes it to adulthood without experiencing fear and pain, and few of us consistently received the compassion and comfort we needed to feel safe and soothed during our most challenging times. Most of us have endured significant loss, grief, rejection, abandonment, humiliation, illness, injustice and more without knowing how to meet and treat those emotions. The good news is that we all have the capacity to heal our emotional wounds, and the first step is to bring them into the light of our awareness.
Read MoreI live on a farm on the central coast of California with two small groves of towering redwood trees that I visit each morning when I walk my dogs. I love to stand amid the trees, my head tilted up, enjoying the view of the sky through their branches. I often lean back against a tree, tuning into its strength before turning around to hug its thick bark. My arms would need to be much longer to fit all the way around the circumference of these giants. It makes me feel like a young child embracing a beloved grandparent many times my size—comforted and protected.
Read MoreFor today’s Pause to Ponder post, I want to share a short but powerful exercise I learned from Patrice Vecchione during our recent Quest “Write Your Mind Open” writing workshop. Before we started writing, Patrice asked participants to create a list of beliefs, attitudes or behavioral patterns that shut us down or hold us back—in relationships, writing, work, or any other arena of life.
Read MoreMy father, Mendek Rubin, often talked about his ego, which he viewed as an insecure part of himself that continually craved admiration and reassurance from the outside world. In the course of his healing journey, he became increasingly aware of all the ways his ego perennially tried to mold him into the person he believed he should be, which often meant rejecting the person he actually was.
Read MoreMy father believed that every person’s essence is pure—that each one if us is born perfect, and then our experiences and conditioning shape us into the people we later become. This conviction even extended to the brutal Nazi guards he closely observed during his three years as a concentration camp prisoner. My dad often speculated about what he would have been like if he’d been swapped at birth with one of his guards and experienced the same upbringing in pre-war Germany.
Read MoreI’ve pondered the meaning of life since I was a young girl. I remember being outside in the countryside on a moonless night when I was eight. Looking up at the countless bright stars in the dark sky, I felt full to bursting with a fierce longing to comprehend the vastness of the universe and the meaning of life. I found my father and with great hope asked, “Daddy, why are we here?”
Read MoreGrowing up, my parents were psychological and spiritual explorers. On an avid quest to heal their deep emotional wounds, they experimented with many different therapies that were popular in New York City in the 1960s—Primal Scream, Rational therapy, Gestalt therapy, Feldenkrais therapy, hypnotherapy, and all types of encounter groups.
Read MoreWhat is wisdom? It definitely goes beyond the information our brain is constantly accumulating. Wisdom is somehow recognized by our entire body and soul as right, healthy and helpful—something that aligns us with a deeper, more timeless truth that helps us live with more peace and ease. I found the following description of wisdom by Yung Pueblo beautiful, so I wanted to share it with you.
Read MoreTomorrow, on January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day will mark 79 years since the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated. This may sound like a long time ago, but my mother Edith and my aunt Bronia are both Auschwitz survivors, and they are both still alive today.
Read MoreToday I’m happy to share a wisdom-packed article I wrote for the January/February print issue of Spirituality & Health magazine that features the beautiful teachings of my beloved cousin Trudy Goodman—a Harvard-trained psychotherapist and an internationally recognized Buddhist spiritual teacher.
Read MoreA huge part of my personal healing journey has been about developing the ability to fully embrace difficult emotions instead of trying to run away or suppress them, which is why I greatly appreciate the following wise words from Glennon Doyle on why we should stop resisting pain.
Read MoreJust before the New Year, in an article that shared my devotion to qigong, I mentioned how beneficial it would be if we all arrived on this planet with a “Homo Sapiens Owner’s Manual” that could help us live our best life physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about what else needs to be included, and another list-topper would be guidance on how to work with emotions.
Read MoreWith 2024 just a few days away, I’ve been thinking about how HUGE the calendar change felt half a century ago when I was a young girl. The excitement of living in a whole new year built up for weeks, and staying up until midnight was a challenge I was eager to accomplish. I just knew the world would feel different at the stroke of midnight. The exhilarating countdown was charged with tremendous anticipation.
Read MoreAs human beings, we’re incredibly complex, so it’s challenging not to arrive on this planet with an owner’s manual explaining how to take care of ourselves emotionally, physically, and spiritually. What we learn from our families, formal education and society is incomplete, and much of it isn’t conducive to our long-term well-being.
Read MoreWith the first official day of winter less than one week away, I’ve been reminiscing about growing up in Brooklyn, where seasonal changes were dramatic compared to my current home in Northern California. As a young girl, I eagerly waited for temperatures to drop below freezing so my parents could take me and my sister ice-skating in Prospect Park.
Read MoreToday’s Pause to Ponder post was excerpted from a chapter titled “Rest” from “Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words,” by poet and philosopher, David Whyte. In this gem of a book, Whyte dives into the meaning of 52 different words as he explores and illuminates the complex experience of being human.
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