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Giving Your Heart Over to Real Change ![](images/quickread.gif) "In this podcast, Sharon Salzberg joins Sounds Trues founder, Tami Simon, to discuss her recent book, Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World--and how you can begin to bring the core of your being into your work, your community, and your life. Sharon and Tami also discuss how contemplative practices can open the heart, agency and reclaiming your power to effect change, the empower... posted on Apr 8, 2765 reads
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How to Break the Cycles of War and Violence![](images/quickread.gif) Anastasiia Timmer is a criminologist who was born and raised in Ukraine. Now based in California, Timmer studies why people commit acts of violence. She and her team of Ukrainian, Russian, and American researchers went to Ukraine in 2017, after the Russian invasion of the Ukrainian provinces of Crimea and Donbas. At that point, as Timmer points out, "people of Ukraine were suffering from war for m... posted on Apr 23, 3284 reads
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Let the Sun Rise![](images/quickread.gif) We all have days when things don't go as smoothly as we'd hoped and we have to make peace with things as they are. Fortunately the sun rises again each morning for all of us and we get another chance to see what the day will bring, to try again and to meet each moment with hope and to practice the art of living. Rejection, fears, doubts and failure are simply part of the human condition. Acknowled... posted on May 2, 2372 reads
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On the Creative and Spiritual Rewards of Gardening![](images/quickread.gif) "Something happens when you are in a garden, when you garden something beyond the tactile reminder that, in the history of life on Earth, without flowers, there would be no us. Kneeling between the scale of seeds and the scale of stars, touching evolutionary time and the cycle of seasons at once, you find yourself rooted more deeply into your own existence transient and transcendent, fragile and... posted on May 23, 2133 reads
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Improvisation and the Quantum of Consciousness![](images/quickread.gif) "Few things in life are more vivifying than a shimmering reminder that we can still surprise ourselves --those rare moments when the urn of the self cracks and out pours something more fully alive: truer than any narrative, more authentic than any performative personhood, unfettered from identity and expectation and all the other scripts we live by. It is both thrilling and terrifying to be so rem... posted on Jul 10, 2671 reads
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Jack Healey: Create Your Future![](images/quickread.gif) Jack Healey, a former Franciscan priest and former head of Amnesty International-USA, has pioneered the use of music activism to exponentially raise the visibility of human rights and inspire nonviolent action by youth. Called "Mr. Human Rights" by U.S. News and World Report, Jack over a 60-year career has "helped move the topic of human rights from closed-door diplomatic negotiations to widesprea... posted on Aug 24, 2342 reads
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Matthew Fox: Bowing to the Heart Over Authority![](images/quickread.gif) "And so creativity should be at the heart of all ritual; not a frozen form, but a flexible form. Dance is at the heart of our prayer. We do circle dancing. We dance to DJ music and live music. And we also do spiral dancing. Getting the body involved is so important. You don't have a Hindu body or an atheist body or a Buddhist body. You have a body. We're all human there, so we can all dance togeth... posted on Sep 8, 3195 reads
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Elderhood: The Post-Heroic Journey![](images/quickread.gif) In her book 'If Women Rose Rooted,' author Sharon Blackie explores what she calls an'Eco-Heroine's Journey.' She describes this as, "a path to understanding how deeply enmeshed we are in the web of life on this planet. In many ways, it is an antidote to the swashbuckling action-adventure that is the Hero's Journey, with its rather grandiose focus on saving the world....This path forces us first to... posted on Oct 3, 2321 reads
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Earning It: A Conversation with John Toki![](images/quickread.gif) "I visualize the process of making art as going on a long walk for miles and miles and miles and miles, and you get up over the hill--maybe the hill symbolizes the artwork--then you see the beautiful ocean and this sunset. But you have to earn it...Life as an artist is hard work. Young artists often don't understand that it's not until they get out on their own, making art, and starting to dig aro... posted on Oct 20, 1299 reads
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Spirituality, Art and Innocence![](images/quickread.gif) "Nothing can be loved at speed, and I think we might be looking at the loss of love in the world due to the increased velocity of ordinary life; the loss of care, skill and attention enough to ensure the health and happiness of each other and the planet earth. It is a baffling problem and governments seem unable to recognize it, or do much about it at present. To put it as a bleak modern metaphor,... posted on Oct 31, 2106 reads
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The Gift of Lewis Hyde's ![](images/quickread.gif) "Gifts pass from hand to hand: they endure through such transmission, as every time a gift is given it is enlivened and regenerated through the new spiritual life it engenders both in the giver and in the receiver. And so it is with Lewis Hydes classic study of gift giving and its relationship to art. The Gift has never been out of print; it moves like an underground current among artists of all k... posted on Nov 20, 1930 reads
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The Fearless Organization![](images/quickread.gif) A completely fearless organization is an aspiration that will always remain slightly out of reach. It will never be the case that every single person shows up at work with a fearless stance that looks outward and forward, and that everyone is more interested in contributing to shared goals than in staying personally safe. Having said that, a 'mostly fearless' organization is one in which people fe... posted on Dec 30, 1200 reads
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Ikebana and the Jedi Model![](images/quickread.gif) "The Japanese traditional arts including ikebana have adopted the apprenticeship model [of the Jedi]. Once you enter the world of ikebana, you are trained under one certain master for at least several years and if the master thinks you are ready to be a master, which is called "shihan" in Japanese, the master recommends you to the board of masters which would approve you as shihan. If approved, yo... posted on Jan 10, 2219 reads
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Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement![](images/quickread.gif) "In Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement, Nobel Prize Winner, Daniel Kahneman together with co-authors Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein show how noise helps produce errors in many fields, including medicine, law, public health, economic forecasting, food safety, forensic science, bail verdicts, child protection, strategy, performance reviews and personnel selection. And although noise can be found... posted on Jan 21, 2180 reads
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Zach Shore: Shining A Light Amidst Deep Moral Conflicts![](images/quickread.gif) "After an encounter on campus with a fellow blind student who had just returned from a solo excursion with seeming ease, Zachary Shore had a moment of awakening: "My problem wasn't my blindness. It was my lack of skills and confidence." He would indeed come to find a remarkable set of skills and confidence -- eventually earning a doctorate from Oxford University, becoming a distinguished scholar o... posted on Feb 8, 2094 reads
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The Company We Keep: Deborah Meier![](images/quickread.gif) "When all goes even remotely well, we are remarkable learners. Our capacity to be so is linked to our equally remarkable capacity to imagine being another. We are designed to learn from others, to be apprentices to adults. All we need are those adults and a setting that seems to accept us and, in turn, seems acceptable to us. This allows us to trust sufficiently to explore and imagine, predict and... posted on Feb 13, 2585 reads
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Asymmetry & the Art of Generous Creation![](images/quickread.gif) "As an artist or writer, how do you compose a work that is generous? How do you place a group of rocks together in a garden, or branches, berries and blossoms together in an ikebana arrangement,-- or ideas and language on a page -- to invite real participation? The artist is giving a gift, I think, if she leaves some connections unfinished. Implied. The artist is giving a gift, I think, when the c... posted on Mar 6, 2628 reads
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Amishi Jha: Pay Attention to Your Attention![](images/quickread.gif) Amishi P. Jha came to her pathbreaking work studying the neuroscience of mindfulness and attention when, as a young professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, she lost feeling in her teeth. She had been grinding them as a profound stress response to burnout from her responsibilities as a wife, mother, and tenure-track professor. Knowing from her academic work that the b... posted on Mar 9, 5078 reads
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Shay Beider: Resilience is Rooted in Source![](images/quickread.gif) Over the last two decades Shay Beider has done pioneering work in integrative medicine through her non-profit organization, Integrative Touch, that enhances well-being, minimizes suffering and facilitates healing for children with special medical needs and their families."Essentially, our entire role as a team is to listen with every little bit of our capacity. And so that's not just listening wit... posted on Mar 16, 2752 reads
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Deborah Cohan: The Dancing Doctor![](images/quickread.gif) "Deborah Cohan is a lifelong dancer, obstetrician-gynecologist, and teacher of embodied medicine. In 2013, moments before undergoing a double-mastectomy, she and the entire operating room team broke out into dance, filmed by the anesthesiologist for Deborahs friends and family. The video found its way into the public sphere and has since been viewed 8 million times. Deborah oversees births at Zuck... posted on Apr 21, 3918 reads
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Curiosity: A Sponge for Terror![](images/quickread.gif) "And so I moved from hoping every morning to find myself waking up from a bad dream to realizing that this room and its contents were the only life I had. And this was the body I had to live it with. I started waking up ready to fully live this specific life and get acquainted with what was in many respects a new body every day. I started the day asking, what part of my body works today? What can ... posted on Jun 15, 3598 reads
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Thirsty for Wonder![](images/quickread.gif) "Contemplative life flows in a circular pattern: awe provokes introspection, which invokes awe. Maybe you're making dinner and you step outside to snip chives from the kitchen garden just as the harvest moon is rising over the easterslopes. She is full and golden, like one of those pregnant women who radiate from within. Suddenly you cannot bear the beauty. Scissors suspended in your hand, tears p... posted on May 4, 3020 reads
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The Thread of My Life: Following the Heart's Wisdom![](images/quickread.gif) "One of the great paradoxes of life is that we must go inward in order to find the road out of ourselves. That is what life asked me to do 15 years ago. After a long period of trying to run away from dark thoughts and feelings my body and mind collapsed. And that was the best thing that could ever happen to me! Before this breakdown I never wondered about what living really means. I just followed ... posted on May 9, 3082 reads
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Seasons of the Monastic Table![](images/quickread.gif) "'Remember the earth whose skin you are,' writes Joy Harjo, and there is literal truth to this. We are grown from the body of the Earth, we are made of it, and to it we return. Plants, bacteria, animals, fungi, humans: we all exist in relationship to each other and to a rotating and orbiting planet whose journey around the sun gives us waxing and waning light, seed sprouts and withering stems. Bei... posted on Jul 5, 1679 reads
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Carrie Newcomer: Asking the Right Questions in Song![](images/quickread.gif) Carrie Newcomer is an American performer, singer, songwriter, recording artist, author and educator. The Boston Globe described her as a "prairie mystic" and Rolling Stone wrote that she is one who "asks all the right questions." According to a 2014 PBS "Religion and Ethics" interview, Newcomer is a conversational, introspective songwriter who "celebrates and savors the ordinary sacred moments of ... posted on Jul 15, 2945 reads
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Slowing Down in Urgent Times![](images/quickread.gif) "To slow down in times of crisis--times that in so many ways require action on all fronts--can seem counterintuitive. We are constantly met with pressures to achieve more, act faster and be better. Dr. Bayo Akomolafe disagrees. Urgent times, he urges, call for quiet; for rest and respite. Instead of ramping up, we must surrender, and wait to witness the transformative potential of stillness. Dr. A... posted on Jul 22, 2852 reads
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Adrian Arleo: Metaphors for Interdependence![](images/quickread.gif) Writes Adrian Arleo, "For 40 years, my sculpture has combined human, animal and natural imagery to create a kind of emotional and poetic power. Often there's a suggestion of a vital interconnection between the human and non-human realms; the imagery arises from associations, concerns and obsessions that are at once intimate and universal. The work frequently references mythology and archetypes in ... posted on Jul 27, 1575 reads
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Jessica Gigot: Moon![](images/quickread.gif) "The full moon rises over the blackberry bramble along the ditch. It has been shining so bright these past few nights, aiming light into all the dark spaces, memories, regrets. ... I am inside with our two girls. We can't afford a full-time babysitter, so in the afternoons, my husband and I alternate, fusing into one person running the farm. During this particular day I have milked the sheep and m... posted on Dec 15, 1477 reads
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It Takes Brokenness to Find It![](images/quickread.gif) "My father was 67 when he died, and that's too young, but lately, as I stare at some hard realities of aging and mortality, I begin to appreciate the fact that he didn't have to endure a long period of frailty, pain, and dependence. My father was himself to very the end, brilliant and good and a force of nature, the most important person in my world, and I miss him terribly even now. Maybe espec... posted on Aug 6, 3861 reads
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Cloudy is the Stuff of Stones![](images/quickread.gif) "Whenever I'm outside for more than ten minutes I start picking up rocks. In Patagonia, in Phoenix, in a Home Depot parking lot -- my gaze is invariably sucked downward into the gravel. I weigh the merits of pebbles by some fickle and mutable aesthetic and either pitch them back or pocket them and stack them among hundreds of their brethren on the counter behind our kitchen sink like fortification... posted on Aug 18, 1608 reads
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This Hunger for Holiness![](images/quickread.gif) "Being in the presence of Barbara Brown Taylor's wonderfully wise and meandering mind and spirit, after all these years of knowing her voice in the world, is a true joy. I might even use a religious word -- it feels like a "blessing." And this is not a conversation about the decline of church or about more and more people being "spiritual but not religious." We both agree that this often-repeated ... posted on Aug 26, 4349 reads
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I Use My Voice as a Weapon of Mass Connection![](images/quickread.gif) "I'd always been doing community sings and gatherings, and people ask me, "What do I have to do in order to be able to sing with you?" And I say, "Are ya breathin'? Good. That's the only qualification." And we need that so much. In my talk, I'll be talking a lot about why we need to share each other's music and how important that really, really is..." Melanie DeMore is a singer/composer, choral co... posted on Oct 3, 2221 reads
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Greater Good Resources for Peace & Conflict![](images/quickread.gif) "Here at the Greater Good Science Center, the war between Israel and Hamas is provoking a range of emotions: sadness, anger, fear, and more. Were reading the news every day and wishing that there were more we could do to help.As an educational nonprofit, the best we can do, perhaps, is to remind ourselves and our readers that peace is always possible, the vast majority of people resist killing, ev... posted on Oct 16, 2219 reads
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Life's Present: Visits with my Mother and Dementia![](images/quickread.gif) In a touching reflection, Jackie Bailey shares heartwarming and intimate details about caring for her elderly mother, whose demeanor has softened with age and dementia. She muses, "It's not that mum has simply forgotten all her old beefs. Getting older is making her brain kinder." Citing studies on neuroimaging and the release of oxytocin, she asserts, "older people are kinder than the rest of us.... posted on Jan 3, 2264 reads
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Conversation with Peacemaking Mystic, Orland Bishop![](images/quickread.gif) “What are the questions being asked of me?” and “Why would I do something my heart is telling me not to do?” Orland Bishop addresses these two questions in his interview with Berry Liberman, spanning from his emigration to the United States to his social healing work. Bishop discusses how what is happening in the world today due to the collective unconscious reflects the un... posted on Apr 30, 2410 reads
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Sri Lanka's Untold Story of Resilience![](images/quickread.gif) When the legendary Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne -- often called "the Gandhi of Sri Lanka" -- passed away last month at the age of 92, his enduring legacy of selfless love expanded in hearts across the globe. For over sixty years, Dr. Ariyaratne's humility and servant leadership stewarded thousands of self-sufficient villages in Sri Lanka. Working quietly and often behind the scenes, the unique non-governm... posted on May 7, 2254 reads
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Becoming a Possibilist![](images/quickread.gif) “I don’t have a crystal ball to know what’s going to happen in the future, but I know that in the present moment, there are possibilities for us as human beings to transform our conflicts.” Author and negotiation expert William Ury’s opens his discussion on Sounds True’s Insights at the Edge podcast with this explanation of what it means to be a possibilist. The... posted on May 13, 2853 reads
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Listening to Stones![](images/quickread.gif) Thought leader Don Hill and renowned Blackfoot elder and scholar Leroy Little Bear explore “different visions of reality” on their hike to the archaeological site, Writing-on-Stone, in Alberta, Canada. They conversed with one another, but also with wind, hoodoos, petroglyphs, local birds, insects and surroundings exploring “ways of knowing.” Little Bear explained that life ... posted on May 16, 2037 reads
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Learning the Language of Plants![](images/quickread.gif) Jessica J. Lee and Zoë Schlanger delve into the intricate world of plant intelligence, memory, and cultural belonging. Their new books offer fresh perspectives on the interconnectedness between humans and plants. Schlanger, inspired by the profound vitality of plants, discusses their intelligence and adaptability, challenging conventional notions of consciousness. Lee, reflecting on the histo... posted on May 22, 1784 reads
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Popular Sneaker Shop Returns -- With A Twist![](images/quickread.gif) A sneakers store will soon reopen in California; however, it will not sell new sneakers. Through gatherings, mentoring, internships, and workshops, locals will learn shoe cleaning and repair, and how to make their old shoes “spicier.” But the space, known as SoleSpace Lab, is about a lot more than shoes. Participants will also learn about the many harmful materials that go into sneaker... posted on Jun 11, 1478 reads
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The Surgeon Who Accepts Community Service as Payment![](images/quickread.gif) As a child, Demetrio Aguila admired his physician father who worked long hours, but with such a higher purpose that “there was always joy in everything he did.” Demetrio wanted to find his own joyful higher purpose. He became a surgeon, and was inspired by his experiences with humanitarian services in the military to help the less fortunate. After much soul searching and some stumbling... posted on Jul 26, 2415 reads
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The Benefits of Volunteering![](images/quickread.gif) Experience and research show that while volunteering is good in and of itself, volunteers may receive as much or more than they give. Some of the benefits: it keeps people active; leads to new friendships, less loneliness, and more social support; it instills a sense of purpose, and improves self-esteem and self-confidence; and they feel a sense of accomplishment. Researchers find volunteering may... posted on Aug 3, 1848 reads
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Ice Cream Aunties Bring Joy and Healing![](images/quickread.gif) A devastating and highly destructive fire last year traumatized people in Lahaina on the island of Maui. Some residents were fearful of coming out of their places of refuge, even when essentials were left on the lawn. Locals who wanted to help wondered what it would take to get them out. Then one had an idea: free ice cream. Now known as the Ice Cream Aunties, they began to signal ice cream delive... posted on Aug 8, 1719 reads
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Iris Murdoch: How to See More Clearly and Love More Purely![](images/quickread.gif) Maria Popova explores essays by Iris Murdoch around self-knowledge and relationships. She stresses that self-knowledge is a lifetime journey. When we do not see progress, or fail in our strivings, we may become anxious “where we feel the discrepancy between our ideals and our personality.” The discrepancies may show up as hurtful to others, and create more anxiety. She writes, “f... posted on Aug 13, 2503 reads
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Untitled![](images/quickread.gif) Thoughts and even subtle emotions influence the activity and balance of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS interacts with our digestive, cardiovascular, immune and hormonal systems. Negative reactions create disorder and imbalance in the ANS while positive feelings such as appreciation
create increased order and balance in the ANS, resulting in increased hormonal and immune system bal... posted on Jul 25, 781 reads
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Linking Relationships and Physical Health![](images/quickread.gif) Research on the link between relationships and physical health has established that people with close interpersonal relationships recover more quickly from disease and live longer. And now the emerging field of social neuroscience, the study of how people’s brains entrain as they interact, adds a missing piece to that data. The most significant finding has been that of "mirror neurons," brain ce... posted on Nov 20, 2118 reads
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Untitled![](images/quickread.gif) Meet a very special group of puppets. They dress and act like real children. Like real children, each one has definite likes and dislikes, hopes and fear, talents and limitations. And, like real children, some have differences like mental, physical or emotional disabilities, and some have lives touched by abuse, drugs or divorce. Together, the Kids on the Block form the core of a unique and exciti... posted on Oct 2, 558 reads
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Energizing Elixir![](images/quickread.gif) Love is in the air almost everywhere -- in movies, on TV, in greeting cards and, of course, in steamy romance novels. Ministers preach about it, pop stars sing about it, but what exactly is love? Researchers at Fetzer Institute are trying to understand its subtler, altruistic nature and coming to interesting conclusions. For instance, having a clear-eyed assessment of your spouse, and not the am... posted on Jun 12, 1165 reads
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To the Rescue in Bangladesh![](images/quickread.gif) Driving in Old Dhaka (Bangaldesh), she saw a cycle-rickshaw standing by the side of the road. Under the decorated hood were two women; one looked young and "very confused." Then she noticed a vehicle with two men in it coming down the road. She sensed something was wrong. "It looked like a dalal (pimp) and his client. I thought "I have to do something!" I looked at the young girl and said, 'Do y... posted on Nov 7, 1045 reads
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Barefoot Solar Engineeers![](images/quickread.gif) Gulab Devi is illiterate, but she talks about circuits, transformers and condensers as other women talk about cooking and sewing. She is one of many barefoot solar engineers. Ask her what she does for a living, and she'll tell you she makes electronic circuits and chargers for solar lighting panels. And before you start wondering whether you heard wrong, she'll tell you that she also installs and... posted on Jul 24, 1501 reads
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