begin to express concern about their weight or body shape, with 40-60 percent of elementary school girls being worried about their weight or about becoming too fat. Moreover, over 50 percent of teenage girls and nearly one-third of teenage boys employ unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes, vomiting, and taking laxatives. Rachael witnessed several of her peers suffer from eating disorders and poor body image due to the “aesthetic nature” of sports like figure skating. "Unfortunately, being in the spotlight, and when you're getting judged based on how you look in an arena full of 18,000 people and nine judges, it... posted on Jul 1 2019 (4,614 reads)

eccentricities. We can offer compassion and tenderness toward that which is challenging. We can practice beholding rather than belittling, befriending rather than begrudging. We can hold ourselves as we want to be held, as we were once held, and as we can sometimes feel ourselves held in the largest embrace of felt-belonging and Oneness. One way to initiate ourselves into the practice of befriending is to explore and come to know ourselves as if beholding an exquisite newborn. Our essential nature is so much more available to us in the state of infancy. If we can come to treat ourselves with the unconditional tenderness and cherishing that we bring to a new life, we can know ourselves an... posted on Jul 28 2019 (9,082 reads)

are in effect offering a blank check of our lives. This may lead us in directions we had never dreamed of, to new challenges and new ways of living adventurously.” On the other hand, we might reject that we have responsibility for violence. This could be based on all kinds of ideas. Here’s an incomplete list: Believing we humans are too small to know what’s right and so shouldn’t try to change things. (Uncertainty leading to faith in the status quo.) Faith that nature or the divine will help solve society’s problems without us having to engage. (Faith-based determinism/fatalism.) Believing that trying to change things is impossible or too difficult ... posted on Aug 5 2019 (6,731 reads)

a poem is made available to the public, the right of interpretation belongs to the reader,” young Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother as she reflected on her first poem. What is true of a poem is true of any work of art: Art transforms us not with what it contains but with what it creates in us — the constellation of interpretations, revelations, and emotional truths illuminated — which, of course, is why the rise of the term “content” to describe creative output online has been one of the most corrosive developments in contemporary culture. A poem — or an essay, or a painting, or a song — is not its “content”; it trans... posted on Sep 9 2019 (5,068 reads)

in this world for many years to come. What are some of the common challenges associated with your work? Time! Because people lead busy lives, we try to limit the amount of time that we spend with each person that we feature in our films. We typically spend one day filming, during which we need to capture a conversation in order to create the narrative of the story, as well as gather visual imagery to complement – all while making sure that we are being authentic and true to the nature and character of that specific person. We constantly remind ourselves that it is just a brief toe-dip into the life of that person, just an intimate moment of sharing, and we do what we can wit... posted on Sep 17 2019 (12,079 reads)

to tell you that this link is very real. Emotions, you will learn, can and do have a direct physical effect on the human heart.  But before we get into this, let's talk a bit about the metaphorical heart. The symbolism of the emotional heart endures even today. If we ask people which image they most associate with love, there's no question that the Valentine heart would the top the list. The heart shape, called a cardioid, is common in nature. It's found in the leaves, flowers and seeds of many plants, including silphium, which was used for birth control in the Middle Ages and perhaps is the reason why the he... posted on Nov 11 2019 (19,403 reads)

mouth. I wondered what in the world he’d brought back and discovered the wet ball of fur was a very young bunny. Jethro continued to make direct eye contact with me as if he were saying, “Do something.” I picked up the bunny, placed her in a box, gave her water and celery, and figured she wouldn’t survive the night, despite our efforts to keep her alive. I was wrong. Jethro remained by her side and refused walks and meals until I pulled him away so he could heed nature’s call. When I eventually released the bunny, Jethro followed her trail and continued to do so for months. Over the years Jethro approached rabbits as if they should be his friends, bu... posted on Nov 26 2019 (6,787 reads)

away” Calgon style, then I need not only these steady and reliable companions on my spiritual journey, but also more free-style forms of prayer and practice: the spontaneous gladness arising from a variety of experiences and places and things and people. As expressed in a thousand ways in the Brussats’ book Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life, the Spirit resides not only in formal religious rituals and spiritual practices, but in everyday life — nature, a cat’s eyes, a beautiful painting, a colorful salad, a lover’s embrace, a new place. This means that I can Spirit Bathe anywhere, anytime. I can be in my kitchen or kneeling over ... posted on Dec 6 2019 (7,367 reads)

experience makes its appearance only when it is being said,” wrote Hannah Arendt in reflecting on how language confers reality upon existence. “And unless it is said it is, so to speak, non-existent.” But if an experience is spoken yet unheard, half of its reality is severed and a certain essential harmony is breached. The great physicist David Bohm knew this: “If we are to live in harmony with ourselves and with nature,” he wrote in his excellent and timely treatise on the paradox of communication, “we need to be able to communicate freely in a creative movement in which no one permanently holds to or othe... posted on Jan 9 2020 (30,531 reads)

of the world, it’s really like winning the lottery. JT: The basic message of our book is that bad is stronger than good, but good can prevail. We end the book very optimistically because we think that life has gotten so much better for the average person in the world in the last three centuries. It’s astonishing—we’re the luckiest people in history to be alive now. And things just keep getting better. We’re hopeful that as we understand our inner nature, this negativity effect, we can use our rational brain to override that when it gets in our way and can use it for positive purposes. The more we can get our rational brain involved in overridi... posted on Jan 17 2020 (15,951 reads)

parsing differing accounts, following those accounts back to the primary sources, corroborating those primary sources with other historical detail can be challenging. Walk with her own Honey: I am very lucky to live among the hills in Southern California. Honey and I enjoy long walks each day, as close to sunrise or sunset as we can get, and soak in the beauty. We frequently travel to the mountains where Honey and I enjoy a good romp in the snow. Favorite animal links: I enjoy nature documentaries and stories based on animals. I subscribe to National Geographic on Facebook and am always in awe at the photographs and stunning stories they share there. Most Inspiring Girl-... posted on Jan 30 2020 (4,401 reads)

ultimately add up into a single great action. At our micro level, there are many things we can do, and are doing, to address even our mega crisis. To be an effective agent of change does not mean we have to know everything. But it does require opening to another level of transformation and creativity. Our predicament presents us with a vast demand and limitless opportunity for growth. Our crisis seems overwhelming, and yet we live in a universe of awe-inspiring creative potential—in nature, in our fellow humans, in the evolutionary process, and certainly in ourselves. The story of evolution is a story of miracle after miracle. We must simultaneously take in the magnitude of th... posted on Feb 3 2020 (9,140 reads)

we have enjoyed for years—Northern Pine Lodge on Potato Lake, in Park Rapids, Minnesota. It is about a 4-hour drive from the Twin Cities under normal circumstances. This trip was not “normal circumstances.” I had all three of my sons, plus three of their friends.  This was the first time in over five years that my oldest son, Lee, 18 years old, came along.  His special needs had evolved to where he no longer enjoyed leaving home very much or being outside in nature. Most recently, he did not want to leave our 3 beloved cats—especially his handsome tuxedo cat Norman Ruffles. Norman will snap at those who pet him “unmindfully”  (me... posted on Feb 12 2020 (7,901 reads)

these religions were even passed on to and why they were brought to these communities as a system of control, to keep you in your place so that you can be doing these specific things that the slave owners want you to do. When we look at actual African diaspora religions, and even Christianity as a religion in Africa before slavery, we see that the way Christianity actually looked and the way religion for African people before America actually looked when it was so inclusive, and it involved nature. It involved crystals. It involved the sun and mindfulness—not with that name. It involved all of this. And all of that got stripped away, and given this dogmatic thing. I’m not ... posted on Feb 17 2020 (6,651 reads)

framework and approach of Critical Alignment in book form. In a Facebook post to his community he wrote, “As a teacher I knew I had discovered something but Wijnand carved it out of the rough teacher’s stone inside.” Geraerts participated in the project under the condition that there would be no money involved. He believed this would give them total freedom to “complete the mission.” Over the course of their lengthy conversations van Leeuwen would understand the nature of that freedom, “ I felt lighter when I stepped into his room, as if something fell off me. Maybe it was my pride or insecurity, defenses or ego. I tried to fully understand him. And thr... posted on Feb 20 2020 (5,191 reads)

dusk – or dawn. The color blue, the color green, the gifts and strengths you have, other people in your life, the ability to laugh. A pet. *** Connect with your spiritual, religious, humanist, cultural, or other communities. Find strength and solace and power in traditions, texts, rituals, practices, holy times and seasons. *** Pray as you are able, silently, through song, in readings, through ancestors. Remember the long view of history, the rhythms and cycles of nature, the invisible threads that connect us all. *** Practice hope. Trust in the future and our power to endure and persist, to live fully into the goodness that awaits. ... posted on Mar 27 2020 (13,844 reads)

Of those with jobs easily made remote and healthcare and savings accounts. Even being able to philosophize about bright sides implies the luxury to catch one’s breath. Implies some pockets of calm and quiet and reflection. I’m not an ER doctor. Or a mother of five in a refugee camp. We live in a two-family house. We have our leather couch. Our dog. Our backyard, which catches and releases the sun. We are merely lucky and grateful and afraid. I’m not an optimist by nature. I’m inclined to distrust and catastrophize. I have a body that tends towards adrenalized, a mind that tends towards obsessive, and when I have too much free time I spiral. It’s str... posted on Apr 11 2020 (13,046 reads)

from the ashes of Hurricane Sandy? For the nonviolent, necessity is truly the mother of invention. But it goes way beyond activists. In just two weeks, China sequestered 100 million metric tons of carbon. People in North India are gazing at the distant Himalayas —some of them for the first time in their lives. They can see blue sky from the streets of Delhi; dolphins have already returned to the canals of Venice, and so forth. Who will want to go back after they’ve seen how fast nature can recover if we give her a chance? Another thing we can take advantage of are the new forms of organization springing up, like the vast network Gandhi set up for the manufacture and distri... posted on May 7 2020 (8,077 reads)

Georgia O’Keeffe, impoverished and solitary in the desert, wrote in considering limitation, creativity, and setting priorities as she was about to revolutionize art while the world was crumbling into its first global war. There are echoes of Stoicism, of Buddhism, of every monastic tradition in O’Keeffe’s core insight — that only in the absence of our habitual comforts, without all the ways in which we ordinarily cushion against the hard facts of our own nature and our mortality, do we befriend ourselves and discover what is most alive in us. The contrast, uncomfortable at first, even painful, becomes a clarifying force. Without the superfluous, the e... posted on May 15 2020 (8,716 reads)

believing he wasn’t stupid or unable. We moved to Southern California where I enrolled him in an academically competitive junior high school. He floundered.  He fell in with “the wrong kids” and began  skipping school. School was more tortuous for him than ever. The downward spiral continued and I watched him sink into depression. In 2004, we started Square Peg Ranch.  My son was now a young man, working on a farm in Maui.  In Maui, he re-discovered nature and beauty.  He was riding horses again and was mentored by the local polo pro who taught him the game he loves.  Alone, he explored the Haleakla Volcano by horseback for days on end.... posted on Aug 20 2020 (6,713 reads)