Why Adults Lose the Beginner's Mind
"We spend so much time and effort trying to teach kids to think like adults. A message of Gopnik's work and one I take seriously is we need to spend more time and effort as adults trying to think more like kids." This wide-ranging conversation between Ezra Klein and psychology professor Alison Gopnik discusses how children think, the value of play and the pivotal difference between 'spotlight' con... posted on Dec 27, 5384 reads

Writing a Better Story
"When I wrote the song Writing A Better Story I was in the process of doing some very deep inner work, which included stories of personal trauma but also legacy burdens that had been carried for generations and finally given to me. There are stories I carry and you carry that support us, sustain us, inspire us to be kinder better people and work for the better kinder world. There are stories we ... posted on Feb 17, 5101 reads

On Meeting Loss, Finding Life
"If we are able to see that loss can teach us and fear can reveal our edges and priorities, we can begin to understand that grief is part of a natural process of transformation, and more so now, as we face radical uncertainty. We also can discover that healthy grieving can be relational, and in other societies grieving and mourning are shared experiences. So being transparent with others about our... posted on Feb 21, 11541 reads

The Revolutionary Power of Diverse Thought
Elif Shafak is a Turkish author, columnist and speaker who writes stories of women, minorities, immigrants, subcultures, and youth in both Turkish and English. In this Ted Talk, she exposes the unprecedented challenges facing the world today, the attraction to and fallacy of following demagogues, and how these same problems will show us the way forward: the indispensability of democracy, the need ... posted on Feb 28, 19400 reads

When the Earth Started to Sing
"This sonic journey written and narrated by David G. Haskell brings us to the beginning of sound and song on planet Earth. The experience is made entirely of tiny trembling waves in air, the fugitive, ephemeral energy that we call sound. Spoken words combined with terrestrial sounds invite our senses and imaginations to go outward into an experience of the living Earth and its history. How did the... posted on Mar 2, 6388 reads

Resisting Revenge to Embrace Humanity
After a Palestinian sniper killed ten Israeli soldiers including her son, who was active in the peace movement, Robi Damelin's first words were: "Do not take revenge in the name of my son." Somewhere below the grief, she knew even in that moment that exacting vengeance would merely fuel the cycle of violence. In her pain, Robi couldn't bear "business as usual" and closed down her PR office. She so... posted on May 11, 2503 reads

Let the Sun Rise
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 Jun 3, 2245 reads

Woodworker Anoo Kulkarni: Answering the Heart's Call
"For many years, I wondered what it really meant to 'follow one's heart'. I was very curious to know what it felt like. I was certain it would be extraordinary, with an air of mystery. Something lofty and noble, a higher purpose. It would be a dramatic turning point after which all the pieces of the puzzle would fall neatly in place. I would no longer feel torn, there would be no guilt or self-dou... posted on Jul 13, 4031 reads

Tolu Ilesanmi: Cleaner and Life Artist
"Tolulope Ilesanmi was a cleaner. He left banking in Nigeria and came to Montreal, where he did his MBA and then started a company, Zenith Cleaning. Tolu considered everything about that company a mystery its people, its practices, its purpose. He said to himself, I will contemplate this thing with awe and curiosity and gratitude until it is done with me. Eventually he wrote down this sentence: C... posted on Jul 16, 1991 reads

Jonathan Foust: Body-Centered Inquiry
"Jonathan Foust is a longtime teacher of yoga and meditation who has guided learners at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health and the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC for more than 20 years. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon and Jonathan discuss the practice of body-centered inquiry--specifically the surprising ways it can be applied to pain. Jonathan explains how ... posted on Aug 1, 4419 reads

The Art of Emptiness
"The composition below is called Woodmaster and it is written for solo Taimu shakuhachi and dedicated to Ken Mujitsu LaCosse, designer and maker of Taimu. Taimu is a wide-bore, natural bamboo variant of shakuhachi, the root-end bamboo flute from ancient Zen Buddhism. This flute itself calls into question rigid lines or divisions between masculine and feminine, sacred and secular: it comes from Zen... posted on Aug 3, 1952 reads

Earth's Wild Music: Celebrating & Defending Nature's Songs
"I started thinking about how I could open people's hearts without breaking them. How I could point to the onrushing extinctions and not force people to turn away in absolute grief. I decided that I was going to have to write in a way that was like a wave -- I would lift people and smash them at the same time. What is it that reaches people without breaking them? What is it that goes straight into... posted on Aug 18, 1527 reads

Haenyeo: The Sea Women of South Korea
"My first encounter with the Haenyeo was through their song. I was hiking in the Seongsan crater on Jeju, an island off the southern coast of South Korea, when I wandered down a winding cliff path to the waterfront. On the rocky beach, an empty seaside restaurant offered seafood to absent crowds. It was obvious that Covid had taken a toll on the local tourism industry. Then the sound of singing ca... posted on Aug 22, 2611 reads

Out of the Head, Into the Heart
"When Unangan Elders speak of the "heart," they do not mean mere feelings, even positive and compassionate ones. "Heart" refers to a deeper portal of profound interconnectedness and awareness that exists between humans and all living things. Centering oneself there results in humble, wise, connected ways of being and acting in the world. Indigenous peoples have cultivated access to this source as ... posted on Aug 30, 2168 reads

Women on the Road
"For a lot of its history, the road trip has conjured predominantly white, straight, masculine images (see literature from Homer to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Jack Kerouac), but of course, thats never been true. Women have always voyaged, whether to follow seasonal resources, relocate or migrate, work to make a better life, or to make art and dream. The road is also one of our homes.[...]Elizab... posted on Sep 1, 1891 reads

Andy Couturier: Writing Open the Mind
"People talk about "freewriting." Free. Writing. What would it be to write totally free? To be liberated from all the niggling habits, the tendency to adopt a certain stance? What might your mind do and say if it weren't in the office drafting memos? A sassafras hickey zowie brainstorm. Writing discovers your own life. Don't box it. Don't expect it or force it to be this or that. The way most of u... posted on Sep 15, 4127 reads

Their Irrepressible Innocence
"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a moist, gray November in my soul; whenever I find myself expecting to be cut off in traffic, to be shortchanged at the store, to hear an ominous clank in the transmission, to catch a cold, to be ludicrously overbilled by the insurance company, to find the library closed early, to endure computer malfunction, to discover the wine... posted on Oct 30, 2084 reads

Golden: The Power of Silence in a World of Noise
In their new book, 'Golden: The Power of Silence in a Noisy World,' Justin Zorn and Leigh Marz explore the meaning of silence in a wide range of contexts--from the West Wing of the White House to San Quentin's death row; from Ivy League brain research laboratories to underground psychedelic circles; from the temperate rainforests of Olympic National Park to the main stage at a heavy metal festival... posted on Oct 4, 3313 reads

Wendell Berry and Helena Norberg-Hodge on Caretaking
"In 2018, Helena Norberg-Hodge sat down with Wendell Berry for a far-reaching discussion. The two are giants of the local economy movement. Berry is a poet and activist, an author of over forty books--including The Unsettling of America and Home Economics--and a lifelong advocate for ecological health, the beauty of rural life, and small-scale farming. He is a recipient of the National Humanities ... posted on Nov 5, 1691 reads

The Link Between Landscape and Diaspora
"My observations of nature sparked adventures into landscape and history, and it was in bearing witness to these injustices that I found language. And observation and description are at the root of bearing witness: it is about saying, in the face of the machinations of power to twist and deny its brutality, this is what I see. It is a simple act, but also a powerful one, for it cuts through facade... posted on Nov 6, 1187 reads

What Happens in Mindfulness
"Like mom and apple pie, mindfulness has an unassailable reputation for virtue and wholesomeness. But what actually goes on in the brain and the psyche to deliver the goods? What are we actually signing up for when we embrace a path of mindfulness? In this important new book John Teasdale deftly weaves a course between the Scylla of cognitive science and the Charybdis of classic spiritual teaching... posted on Mar 13, 3531 reads

This Land is Their Land
"Most of us who are not Wampanoag or American Indian will never fully grasp the raw emotions indigenous people associate with Thanksgiving.[...]If how we tell history is one of the ways we shape our present and future, we can do no better than to rethink the myth of the First Thanksgiving and its role in the Thanksgiving holiday." Dr. David J. Silverman, is a professor and writer who specializes i... posted on Nov 26, 1665 reads

Grace Before Dinner
"Twenty five years ago I started Greens restaurant in San Francisco, then left to live in Rome, where I began writing on food and cooking. I departed Rome just as the Slow Food movement took root there in 1986, and I didnt become formally involved for another ten years. (Among other things, I now run Slow Foods Santa Fe chapter). But I was informally supporting Slow Food concepts all along. My dee... posted on Dec 24, 1762 reads

Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder
""Music," the trailblazing composer Julia Perry wrote, "has a unifying effect on the peoples of the world, because they all understand and love it... And when they find themselves enjoying and loving the same music, they find themselves loving one another." But there is something beyond humanistic ideology in this elemental truth --something woven into the very structure and sensorium of our bodie... posted on Jan 16, 3772 reads

Hidden Teachings on Life & Death
Neil Douglas-Klotz is a renowned teacher, scholar, author, and musician who specializes in the native traditions and ancient Semitic languages of the Middle East. His most recent book, Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus: The Hidden Teachings on Life and Death, is the culmination of his life's work over 40 years. By examining the "heart talks" of Jesus -- the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes -- he ad... posted on Mar 22, 3833 reads

How Did You Become A Writer?
"How did you become a writer? Is a question asked of me surprisingly often when I visit schools, which I much enjoy not only as part of my overarching subtle devious plan to get on the good side of the children who will soon run the world, but also for the consistent entertainment of their artlessly honest questions (the best ever: Is that your real nose?), and for the sometimes deeply piercing de... posted on Apr 12, 1943 reads

Our Job Is To Sing: An Interview with David Baker
"I have hundreds of pages of notes about whales and plastiglomerates and the whale fall and what happens in the oceans and fishing, and I just wasn't happy with the poem that I was writing. At the same time, I was trying to think about writing a poem about my illness. We didn't even know what it was 25 years ago when I first got sick--something called M.E. I began to take notes for that, too. I've... posted on May 6, 1320 reads

The Most Tender Gaze I Have Ever Beheld
"As I was facing into the slope and digging, I became aware of a presence behind me. I quickly looked over my left shoulder and saw a deer quietly standing about 4 feet behind me. Knowing it was hunting season, I ignored the deer not wanting to familiarize it to people and make it easier to hunt and kill. I continued working for another ten minutes but kept feeling the presence of the deer. I fi... posted on May 22, 7244 reads

Among the Trees
"Ive had a love of trees all my life. Throughout high school, I lived in a house in the woods in Massachusetts, and even on the darker mornings of winter what kept me from being frightened was the trees themselvesmostly scrub pines, as we called them there, with struggling oaks scattered among them. Unlike the kids at school, the trees remained silent as I passed, and I took this as a sign of acce... posted on May 16, 1788 reads

Finding Treasure in the Ruins of Trauma
"An early pioneer in mind-body medicine, Dr. James Gordon says we are all affected by trauma. But all of us also "have a great and largely untapped capacity to help and heal ourselves and one another." Dr. Gordon founded the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, DC, initially to transform health care by training health professionals with the tools of stress- and trauma relief. But he soon h... posted on May 28, 2498 reads

Let Us Commence
"I bet I'm beginning to make your parents really nervous -- here I am sort of bragging about being a dropout, and unemployable, and secretly making a pitch for you to follow your creative dreams, when what they want is for you to do well in your field, make them look good, and maybe also make a tiny fortune. But that is not your problem. Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and ... posted on Jun 5, 4129 reads

Reemergence of Animate World Experiences
"To shift my own awareness toward a more-than-human perspective, I sometimes take a wooden flute outside and begin to play, offering simple music to pine and stone, offering gratitude to billions of ancestors from elements born in supernovas, to bacteria and trees, insects and trilobytes, to lineages of human ancestors both known and unknown. Offering wild prayers for all the beings who come afte... posted on Jul 1, 2515 reads

The Sound of the Genuine
"There is in every person something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine ... There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. Nobody like you has ever been born and no one like you will ever be born again -- you are the only one.

If you cannot hear it, you will never find whatever it is for which you are searching and if you h... posted on Jul 26, 2334 reads

The Many Lives of Water
"The water present with us on Earth has been here since the beginning of time. People have long journeyed to distant hot springs, mineral pools, misty waterfalls, and formidable geysers for the promise of waters endowed healing properties. In almost every religion, water has the ability to absorb prayers and bestow blessings. "Water holds memories since time began and has a living spirit just like... posted on Aug 14, 2528 reads

The Syntax of Sedimentation
"Susan Tichy's recent collection of poems, North | Rock | Edge: Shetland 2017/2019, distills somatic observations down their bones. Tichy describes an immersive, granular experience exploring the contours, rocks, winds, and waters of Shetland, a remote northern archipelago between Scotland, the Faroe Islands, and Norway. In isolated yet accumulative images and line breaks, she details the distance... posted on Sep 2, 1148 reads

To Converse Well
"Good conversation mixes opinions, feelings, facts and ideas in an improvisational exchange with one or more individuals in an atmosphere of goodwill. It inspires mutual insight, respect and, most of all, joy. It is a way of relaxing the mind, opening the heart and connecting, authentically, with others. To converse well is surprising, humanising and fun. Above is my definition of an activity cent... posted on Sep 16, 1902 reads

Bone, Breath & Gesture: Practices of Embodiment
Edited by Don Hanlon Johnson, "Bone, Breath and Gesture," was first published in 1995. Alternating in-depth interviews, lectures and writings, its contents introduce and explore the principles and techniques of some of the most influential pioneers of bodywork and body awareness disciplines in the West-- among them, Ida Rolf, Moshe Feldenkrais, Marion Rosen, Thomas Hanna, F.M. Alexander, Bonnie Ba... posted on Sep 17, 2498 reads

Beyond Beauty: A Conversation with Paul Reynard
"My own experience is that there are moments when suddenly, after I've been working a long time at painting, I'm no longer trying to make or do something. I begin to be led, as if my brush were just following where the painting in its finished state was leading me. At that point I am open to something which most of the time I am unable to express, because I want to direct it. I want to make it mys... posted on Sep 22, 1327 reads

Willing to Be Dazzled
"I decided to visit my friend Aristotle, who lives in a house on a hill at the west end of the ranch. We sampled various kinds of cookies and sipped decaffeinated green tea, and we vented, kvetched, and rhapsodized, as we are prone to do. Mostly kvetched, if the truth be told. Aristotle just turned ninety, and I seek the wisdom of an elder from him, but he is too modest to admit he has acquired an... posted on Sep 24, 3218 reads

Touch at A Distance: Language, Music, Sound
This 2007 Radiolab episode takes the listener, "on a tour of language, music, and the properties of sound. We look at what sound does to our bodies, our brains, our feelings and we go back to the reason we at Radiolab tell you stories the way we do. First, we look at Diana Deutsch's work on language and music, and how certain languages seem to promote musicality in humans. Then we meet Psychologis... posted on Sep 28, 1446 reads

The Irrepressible Matriarchs of the North
Sharon Blackie's latest book, "Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life," braids together myth, psychology and memoir. Within itm Blackie makes a passionate case for menopause as the threshold to a vital and rich phase of life, and she deftly explores the what flourishing at this stage when many assume decline, can look like. Surfacing little-known, yet potent elder women in European myth and... posted on Oct 14, 1952 reads

How Greed Could Save the World
What if all this time weve been greedy for the wrong things? What if the work we're doing to solve the world's problems is destined to stay small and ultimately fail? In this talk, filled with gripping stories and humbling experiences, Hawah Kasat, an award-winning community organizer and leader, explores some of the deep illusions behind the social sector. In a world that is crumbling between our... posted on Oct 20, 1287 reads

A Family Reunion at the End of the World
"Have you ever been at a reunion or a big party, when the plates are empty and conversations wind down and you think about leaving? Then you hear peals of laughter, the clatter of dishes, and contagious giggles from behind the kitchen door. Thats where the real party is, as the aunties portion out leftovers to be taken home, scrape the dishes, and laugh with their hands in hot soapy water, snappin... posted on Nov 25, 1966 reads

The Vital Role of Beauty Even in War Time
"Art philosopher Arthur Danto wrote that beauty, while optional for art, is not an option for life. Neuroscientists have shown that our brains are biologically wired for beauty: The neural mechanisms that influence attention and perception have adapted to notice color, form, proportion and pattern. We've found that refugees worldwide, often with limited or no legal rights, still invest considerabl... posted on Dec 2, 1462 reads

Gems of Wisdom from Small is Beautiful
In 1999 Paul Hawken wrote, "What seemed so evident to early readers of "Small is Beautiful" still seems painfully opaque to the world today. When the book was first published, many thought that change would come about through insight, logic, compassion, and reason. Increasingly, it seems that change will come about after we have exhausted every other theory of greed and gain, and the winds of chan... posted on Dec 10, 2199 reads

The Giving Tree in Nova Scotia
From the beginning, it was literally something sweet. "I just wanted to put some candy canes up for the little ones," Peggy Feltmate recalls the first year she put up a "giving tree" outside her home. It was cold outside, and she saw children reaching for the candy canes without any gloves or mittens on their hands. "Okay, I'm a grandma, I'm going to add some mittens and things to the tree," Feltm... posted on Dec 24, 2177 reads

Deepening Into Regenerative Practice
Regeneration isn't just about climate change, it's about an evolution in our attitudes and values. In a riveting conversation between living systems catalysts Daniel Christian Wahl and Bill Reed, the principles and practices of regeneration emerge as a path towards ongoing personal and environmental growth. As Reed highlights, "the deliverable for a regenerative project is building the capacity an... posted on Dec 27, 1590 reads

Animal Shelter Celebrates After All Pets Adopted For First Time
Christmas came early at the Adams County SPCA in Pennsylvania, U.S. where "a true miracle" led to the shelter being completely pet-free for the first time in nearly 50 years! Typically buzzing with barks and meows, the shelter shared news of the emptiness, which was attributed to successful adoptions and pets being restored to their families. Imagine the joy in the faces of the staff and volunteer... posted on Dec 28, 1116 reads

The New Old Age
Still wondering what you want to be when you grow up? Turns out, you're not alone. A fascinating phenomenon is burgeoning among retiring adults as they step out of their primary careers and into "the Encore Years". Programs at institutions like Stanford and Harvard have cropped up to support such transitions, particularly for established leaders. Such a process unearths raw questions on the nature... posted on Feb 15, 3961 reads

He Left Company Ownership to its 700 Employees
Nearly half a century ago, Bob Moore founded a natural foods brand that now boasts over 200 products in more than 70 countries. On February 10, at the age of 94, he passed away peacefully in his home in Oregon, US. Having grown Bob's Red Mill and Natural Foods with his wife, who passed away in 2018, Moore began securing the company's legacy in 2010, by transferring ownership to its employees -- ov... posted on Feb 22, 2916 reads