To Heal the Human Heart
The science of empathy is now one of the most celebrated subjects of psychological and neuro-psychological enquiry and it has the potential to transform human society in spectacular ways. For instance, if a human being's central nervous system carries blueprints for empathy, and if the health and vitality of one's empathy circuits depend on one's environment from conception through adulthood, what... posted on Feb 8, 0 reads

Why Be Kind?
In the wake of the US election, filmmakers Jessie Auritt and Alexandra Berger wanted to do something to try and combat the negativity, xenophobia, racism and sexism that surfaced. So they turned their camera on a demographic that hadn't been quite so jaded by the media and current events in the hopes that we might all learn from them and try to be kind and accepting toward other people, despite ou... posted on Feb 12, 7665 reads

On Walls, Cultural Resistance and the Artistry of Lily Yeh
Founded 15 years ago by Lily Yeh, Barefoot Artists is an organization that "travels to impoverished or traumatized communities and brings art as a means of healing and transformation. Part visual art, part community building, bonding, and mobilizing, it is a process [Yeh] describes as a living social sculpture. Yeh passionately believes in the power of communities to embrace their suffering and tr... posted on Mar 7, 2669 reads

What a Greater Good School Looks Like
One school in India is helping to counter the impact of intense academic pressure, high parental expectations, and extreme social and economic barriers students often face, by implementing outlets for gratitude, mindfulness, self-compassion, and more. Seth M. R. Jaipuria School, led by Anjali Jaipuria features a Garden of Kindness, Let It Go Pond, Gratitude Tree, and other spaces in which pre-k th... posted on Apr 9, 16802 reads

Food Not Bombs: A Conversation with Keith McHenry
Keith McHenry, co-founder of Food Not Bombs, has a vision: food not bombs changes people, service brings people together, and abundant thinking turns hearts to peace. For the last 35 years, he has worked with others to salvage surplus food, prepare it, and serve it for free in parks, at protests, and during disaster relief efforts. At these meals, volunteers distribute literature, share stories an... posted on Jul 7, 8625 reads

The Grace of Great Things
What if the goal of education becomes making visible and lifting up the souls of all those involved in the process? How might this way of reclaiming and re-grounding the learning-teaching relationship transform both the individual souls involved and the institutional souls of the systems themselves? Parker Palmer reflects on these and other profound questions with respect and grace in an article a... posted on Aug 25, 15783 reads

Driving Lessons
In this beguiling essay, writer Snigdha Manickavel brings to life the experience of taking driving lessons in small town South India. "I'm learning to drive. I am grasping terror in my hands and tossing it aside. I wake up early in the morning, earlier than I have for years. It is cool and grey outside and my room is filled with dark shapes and hungry mosquitoes. I wear my sister's abandoned cloth... posted on Feb 2, 6100 reads

The Science of Stress: Memories, Your Immune System and More
Many people have studied the effects that stress can have on the body, "but no researcher has done more to illuminate the invisible threads that weave mind and body together than Dr. Esther Sternberg. Her groundbreaking work on the link between the central nervous system and the immune system, exploring how immune molecules made in the blood can trigger brain function that profoundly affects our e... posted on Oct 8, 30293 reads

Money and My Relationship With It
In this intimate conversation, individuals who have spent much of their lives exploring the depths of our relationship with money share their perspectives, vulnerable moments, and truths around the topic. Jacob Needleman is a philosopher who's written 20 books on the inner life, including one called "Money and the Meaning of Life." Min Xuan Lee chimes in from her perspective as founder of PlayMool... posted on Oct 2, 11073 reads

Lunar Wisdom: An Interview with Anthony Aveni
According to cultural astronomer Anthony Aveni at Colgate University, the moon and the sun are in a cosmic dance that defines our very relationship to life. Yet in modern western culture, we barely know the moon's cycles, nor pay attention to the effect it has upon us. Aveni has explored the meanings attributed to the sun and the moon in cultures around the world and contrasted that with our own. ... posted on Dec 5, 12863 reads

What the Dolphin Said
Judith Simon Prager, PhD, is a writer, teacher, and clinical hypnotherapist. She has lived all over the world working as a novelist, screen writer, and journalist. However, Judith is probably best known for her method of Verbal First Aid, which teaches first responders that how they speak with a patient in an emergency situation can ultimately save that person's life, as well as speed up healing... posted on Mar 28, 17108 reads

Walking the Path of Love
In 2011, Matt Hopwood set forth on a journey through the United Kingdom and beyond to practice heart-led activism and compassion. Seeing love as the source of human connection and genuine social action, Hopwood listened to and shared as many love stories as he could. The experience ended up being incredibly meaningful to him not just because of the moving stories that came out of it but because of... posted on Mar 30, 0 reads

Pico Iyer Chooses Stillness
Pico Iyer has spent much of his life traveling. He's described himself as "something of a global creature"having been born in England to Indian parents and then raised in California, later moving to New York and now living in Japan and sought out places as a travel writer and explorer that piece together, much like his own inner world, disparate cultures and identities "to make a stained-glass who... posted on May 11, 12344 reads

How to Befriend the Universe
With unbridled exuberance and a zest for life, philosopher and comedian Emily Levine shares how she learned to love reality and death while facing her own injuries and terminal illness. Part quantum physics, part nature, some philosophy, and lots of laughs come together in this TED talk brilliantly presented by Maria Popova. In it Levine shares the revelation, "You have to understand that we don't... posted on Jun 10, 10365 reads

Counter Mapping
The use of maps on our phones and on paper, show border lines and roads that don't tell the deeper story of the land we live and travel on. Deep within the land are stories of ourselves and our ancestors that can enrich life as we rarely know it. Jim Enote is one such man who knows the soul stories that the land can hold. Jim is a traditional Zuni farmer and director of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum an... posted on Jul 17, 11111 reads

Teaching Brain Science to Monks and Nuns
Where do compassion and empathy come from? What makes life sentient?
This summer, as they have the past several years, professors from across the United States and elsewhere are traveling to three major Tibetan monastic universities in Southern India to train monastics in the philosophy of science, physics, biology, and neuroscience. Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns have grappled with these ... posted on Oct 14, 2391 reads

Maira Kalman: Daily Things to Fall in Love With
Maira Kalman would describe her life as very boring. "If most people had to live it, they would go, 'Oh, that's it?'" she says. Yet the visual storyteller, and author and illustrator of over 20 books for adults and children leads a life that would leave many with feelings of awe and fascination. Paying keen attention to its details, she is a master of introspection, curiosity, and awareness. In th... posted on Feb 14, 6661 reads

First, the Work of Paying Attention to the World
"David George Haskell is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist whose work is located at the thrumming intersection between science and poetry. He integrates rigorous research with a deeply contemplative, immersive approach, and his subjects are unexpected and revelatory. His widely acclaimed, Pulitzer-finalist book, "The Forest Unseen," chronicles the story of the universe in one square meter of... posted on Mar 22, 4993 reads

Sacred Instructions: Creation Songs
"The relationships that exist between people and place are often memorialized through defining words that merge into story. As Indigenous people, our lives comprise these words and the stories that they illustrate. These words and stories paint a picture that brings into form all of the elements of our existence. They provide a clear view of our unique cultural landscape, and they offer us a defin... posted on Feb 19, 9925 reads

A Good Death: An Interview with Stephen Jenkinson
Author of Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul, and subject of the documentary Griefwalker, palliative care counselor and theologian Stephen Jenkinson invites us to contemplate the mystery and meaning of a "good death" so we may more fully embrace life. Drawing on Buddhism and the ancestral wisdom of indigenous people, Jenkinson ponders the ways in which Western individualism has contributed ... posted on Apr 26, 21601 reads

Becoming a Blessing
"A good story is like a compass, it points to something true and invites us to orient our own direction according to it and perhaps to live a little better." With these words Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen proceeds to tell stories that enthrall and enchant and indeed help to orient us and guide us to seek to live better. She shares stories of her grandfather, whom she calls a "flaming mystic," that were t... posted on May 3, 4500 reads

Heroines of Health
This moving documentary shares "three of the many untold stories that hold the key to unlocking better health for more people around the world." The three women, one a medical doctor and teacher from India, another a midwife assistant from Indonesia, and the third the director of a community health center in Kenya, though worlds apart, share a common journey to bring hope to women and children in ... posted on May 17, 1887 reads

Coastal Communication: A Mother and Son's Moving Collaboration
When New York based author and social activist, Jane Jackson suffered an aneurysm, it affected both her memory and language skills. Over the months that followed she recovered through the unconditional support of her family, and the power of poetry. As a way to promote healing and reestablish language skills, she and her son began writing poems together. The poems were crafted line by line in emai... posted on Jun 29, 9349 reads

The Lost Words: Reclaiming the Language of Nature
"In early 2015, when the 10,000-entry Oxford children's dictionary dropped around fifty words related to nature -- words like fern, willow, and starling -- in favor of terms like broadband and cut and paste, some of the worlds most prominent authors composed an open letter of protest and alarm at this impoverishment of children's vocabulary and its consequent diminishment of children's belonging t... posted on Jul 23, 12503 reads

Gratefulness Embraces Parkinson's
"I was diagnosed with Parkinson's just over three years ago when I was 50. Receiving the diagnosis from a matter-of-fact doctor was a traumatizing experience, and I felt that my life and my family's identity had collapsed. Life was difficult and still is difficult, yet something amazing is beginning to happen. I have slowly started to shift my attitude from the anger, fear, and loneliness brought ... posted on Aug 4, 6770 reads

Toni Morrison: On Borders and Belonging
"What does home mean and where do we anchor our belonging in a world of violent alienation and alienating violence? I use "alien" here both in the proper etymological sense rooted in the Latin alienus, "belonging to another," and in the astrophysical sense of "from another planet," "not human," for the combined effect of a dehumanizing assault on belonging for those treated and mistreated as alien... posted on Aug 7, 7628 reads

Janwaar Castle: A Modern Skate Park in Rural India
When is a skatepark more than a skatepark? When it is Janwaar Castle, a local playground in Janwaar village. Between 50-60 children visit the park every day where they learn English, music, dance, painting, 3D modelling, and general life skills. It is a place where Adivasis and Yadavs, boys and girls, and all age groups play together. There are two rules: no school no skating and girls first. Sinc... posted on Sep 10, 4191 reads

Inner Preacher vs Inner Teacher
Between message and meaning, "Art is co-created by artist and audience, by writer and reader." In this Ursula K. Le Guin essay, Maria Popova explores the questions of where to find strength and hope, what is a writer's calling in this time and place, what work will make a difference, and how we might create a community of purpose. To each, Le Guin's answer is in trying to write well. Writing is no... posted on Sep 9, 4961 reads

Protect. Restore. Fund.
Climate activists Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot talk about solutions to the problem of anthropogenic global warming: a combination of leaving fossil fuels in the ground and protecting and restoring living ecosystems like forests, mangroves, swamps and seabeds that can pull enormous quantities of carbon from the air and store them safely, naturally. Current government subsidies around the world... posted on Sep 27, 1929 reads

While I Yet Live
The quilters of rural Gee's Bend, Alabama, many of whom are descendants of slaves, learned to quilt from their mothers and grandmothers. They also learned, sitting under the quilting table as small children, valuable life lessons, and the hopes and dreams their families had for them. Their brightly colored quilts speak of love, peace, joy, and the value of hard work. Like their mothers and grandmo... posted on Oct 20, 2815 reads

Paying It Forward: An Interview with Nipun Mehta
"For more than 20 years, Nipun Mehta and his parents have been opening his doors to friends and strangers every Wednesday evening, creating a space for people to sit in circle together, meditate, share thoughts, and enjoy a meal. The invitation is to "wake up to wisdom in stillness and community," a simple gesture of service and connection that now takes place in people's living rooms across the g... posted on Nov 19, 7775 reads

Alone But Not Lonely
"We live in a rural farm in India, don't have a TV at home, and have bought our son a total of two toys. Most of his clothes are gifted by family and friends. He doesn't eat cookies, chocolates, carbonated drinks, or fast food. He must be one miserable kid, right? If I say, 'No,' one might respond with, 'Well, he doesn't know what he is missing and he is being brought up in an extremely protective... posted on Apr 26, 47858 reads

Square Peg Foundation: Putting Human Dignity First
"So the question comes up why horses? Here's the thing-- a horse never sees potential in any one. A horse sees you for exactly who you are and a horse offers you the dignity of that. The dignity to be scared, the dignity to be dis-regulated, the dignity to be curious, or kind, or excited.The dignity to just be you...Square Peg was dreamed up by a young mother with a child that needed to move and t... posted on Aug 20, 6547 reads

Welcoming the Gifts of Anxiety
"Your anxiety helps you identify problems and opportunities, and it brings you the energy and focus you need to face them. Anxiety also helps you complete your tasks and projects, and it gives you the push you need to meet your deadlines. Yes, you need skills to work well with your anxiety, but your anxiety is a valuable and brilliant emotion that's essential to pretty much everything you do." Kar... posted on Sep 11, 0 reads

Judith Blackstone on Trauma & The Unbound Body
As a professional dancer in the wake of a devastating back injury Judith Blackstone found herself lying on the ground in a state of prayerful grief, and desperation. It was then that, by releasing her weight to the ground, she discovered subtle currents of energy could be felt arising from the floor, moving her body organically towards balance. Since childhood she had been aware of a numinous pres... posted on Oct 16, 5892 reads

Heroines of Health
This moving documentary by Lisa Russell shares "three of the many untold stories that hold the key to unlocking better health for more people around the world." The three women, one a medical doctor and teacher from India, another a midwife assistant from Indonesia, and the third the director of a community health center in Kenya, though worlds apart, share a common journey to bring hope to women ... posted on Nov 11, 2051 reads

A Reset for Unprecedented Times
"We are currently living amid a planetary climate emergency, a global pandemic, uprisings against state violence upon Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples, and a failing economic system the world over. Pandemic lockdowns have forced major lifestyle changes: shifting consumption habits, realizing how deeply connected we are to each other and the environment, and focusing more on the non-material as... posted on Jan 20, 4706 reads

The Reverence Movement
Growing up the youngest of 10 siblings in a Watts, Los Angeles housing project, and a member of the famed Crips gang, Aqeela Sherrills witnessed from the inside the pain and devastation of the countrys most violent urban street gang war, which would proceed to claim 30,000 lives between 1983-2003. By 1992, he and his brother and a few other key community players had brokered a historic peace agree... posted on Feb 19, 6298 reads

They Sang with a Thousand Tongues
"Might I venture to say that our most compelling imperative today--if one is permitted to speak in those ways--is to reclaim the thickness of our tongues and learn the names and faces of our neighbours; it is to realize that our worldview is just a tittle in a never-ending sentence; it is to see that there are more ways to learn than school and polished degrees could ever accommodate and more ways... posted on Apr 25, 6724 reads

To Heal the Human Heart
The science of empathy is now one of the most celebrated subjects of psychological and neuro-psychological enquiry and it has the potential to transform human society in spectacular ways. For instance, if a human being's central nervous system carries blueprints for empathy, and if the health and vitality of one's empathy circuits depend on one's environment from conception through adulthood, what... posted on May 15, 43235 reads

Of People, Plants and Place
"Our ancestors knew the places where they lived: every inch of land, every kind of plant, every sign of life. They made use of everything. They were intimately involved with their surroundings, immersed in the ebb and flow of the seasons. Their attention was anchored to the here and now as they watched with anticipation the gradual emergence of shoots and stems, flowers and fruits, waiting patient... posted on Aug 26, 2768 reads

Building Belonging: Being an Ambassador to the Earth
"john a. powell is the director of the Othering & Belonging Institute and a professor of law, African American studies, and ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He previously directed the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University, and the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota. He is also the author of Racing to Jus... posted on Aug 31, 3473 reads

The Well of Being
The Well of Being is an exquisite 'children's book for adults,' one that encompasses the journey of life from the Big Bang, to this very moment that we find (or lose) ourselves in. Jean-Pierre Weill spent three years writing and illustrating this book about himself-- and perhaps everyone. Playful and profound in its approach to the human condition, Weill's words and whimsical drawings reveal the ... posted on Dec 2, 3408 reads

While I Yet Live
The quilters of rural Gee's Bend, Alabama, many of whom are descendants of slaves, learned to quilt from their mothers and grandmothers. They also learned, sitting under the quilting table as small children, valuable life lessons, and the hopes and dreams their families had for them. Their brightly colored quilts speak of love, peace, joy, and the value of hard work. Like their mothers and grandmo... posted on Dec 10, 2308 reads

An East-West Approach to Transformation
This film chronicles a coming together of U.S. and China leaders in the consciousness and wellbeing sector, led by Mina Lee. At the heart of Minas life and work is the permission to be stretched by love. She is guided by the question of how to bridge cultural and intergenerational divides the ways in which we dehumanize each other through misunderstanding, whether between investors and investees,... posted on Dec 14, 1625 reads

Legendary Cellist Pablo Casals, at Age 93, on Creative Vitality
"Long before there was Yo-Yo Ma, there was Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor Pablo Casals (December 29, 1876-October 22, 1973), regarded by many as the greatest cellist of all time. The recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the U.N. Peace Medal for his unflinching dedication to justice and his lifelong stance against oppression and dictatorship, Casals was as much an extraordinary... posted on Jan 20, 4233 reads

You Are Not Alone Across Time
"Remember, Bryan Doerries likes to say in both physical and virtual gatherings, you are not alone in this room and you are not alone across time. With his public health project, Theater of War, he is activating an old alchemy for our young century. Ancient stories, and texts that have stood the test of time, can be portals to honest and dignified grappling with present wounds and longings and cal... posted on Feb 27, 3167 reads

Rediscovering the Earth Emotions
"Glenn Albrecht is a philosopher and environmentalist who for many years was Professor of Sustainability at Murdoch University in Western Australia, and is now an Honorary Associate at the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney. In his book 'Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World,' he argues that we have lost awareness of our deep and long-lasting connection with nature, and no longe... posted on Mar 3, 2712 reads

Experiments with Wild Grace
"I had been in a place of acute hopelessness and inner anguish in which I felt so profoundly alone in the world and disconnected from even the possibility of authentic connection. Somehow amidst all that I found the wherewithal to listen to an inner prompting that urged me to try an experiment. This experiment was to allow myself to write a 'bad poem' every day for a month. Writing poetry had been... posted on Apr 6, 4474 reads

Monkey Stories, the Best Kind of Stories
"When the monkeys come we have to quickly close all the windows and close the doors that lead to the balconies because if we don't, the monkeys will come in and steal all our stuff. With their crinkly hands and perfect little finger-nails they reach in and grab whatever they can--safety pins, fruit, glass beads. If the doors are open they walk in and take entire bunches of bananas off of the dinin... posted on Jun 29, 3664 reads