One of the good things about learning and growing is that I keep getting clearer about what nourishes me. On the spectrum of sound, I prefer silence. On the spectrum of movement, I prefer stillness. These preferences are not just reactions to an overly busy life, they have been with me since childhood. I’ve learned […]

I have more authenticity and joy now than I did when I was younger. Once, my to-do list was filled with things other people wanted me to do, many of which I didn’t want to do. I grew resentful, first of those who had expectations of me, then of myself for going along, not having

I bumped into a tweet about Seth Godin’s latest blog yesterday. The title is “All models are wrong, some models are useful.” This is how I feel about both traditional and nontraditional medical models. Even traditional science is not a perfect representation of the human body, but it’s a good enough model to provide healing,

We are midway through the month of April, midway through the challenge. It’s a good point for taking stock. There’s still a ways to go, but look how far we’ve come! It takes a bit of a nudge to keep the momentum going. I’m also midway through the 40 days of saying my mantra. Om

“Little Gidding” is the name of the 4th poem in T.S. Eliot’s book, Four Quartets. It’s an important steppingstone in my transformation for three reasons. It was one of the poems recited at the professional training I attended for Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. The workshop was an introduction not only to meditation but also to feeling

Soon after I started meditating daily, I decided to stop wearing a wristwatch. I began to observe that wearing a watch was adding to my sense of time stress. I was focusing on what was next rather than on what I was doing in the moment. After I made my decision to take my watch

One of my fellow A-to-Z bloggers, Jenny Writes, is using Joy as her theme for the whole month of April. For me, it’s a touchstone in my transformation. When I was at my lowest point, not knowing which way to turn, there was a compass needle inside me that always pointed in the direction of

In 1983, when I was 29 years old, I took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a psychological test of preferences based on Carl Jung’s theories. The test was administered to a group of retreat participants from my church. I found out I was an introvert. Suddenly, a lot of things became clear. It wasn’t that

Happiness is like light in that it has wave/particle duality. It comes both as a flow of energy and in discrete foil-wrapped packets of dark chocolate. It is both an outcome and a process. Happiness can be pursued, but it often arises unbidden, when my focus is not on being happy, but on being of