social conflict brings out an additional and unique hormonal response that is not stimulated by other forms of stress. This unique pattern of hormonal stress response predisposes socially stressed mice to herpes infection. The hormone that does this, which is secreted in saliva, is called nerve growth factor. Those who are prone to herpes virus “cold sores” will find this situation all too familiar. It is exactly when we are stressed — perhaps with lack of sleep and too much work, but especially with prolonged anxiety over personal or workplace situations — that we invariably get a cold sore. In the remainder of the wholly illuminating The Balance Within, ... posted on Mar 2 2020 (6,562 reads)

on it. I suspect now that the Treasure was Earth itself and the light and warmth of the sunbeams ; yet sometimes I fancy that I have been searching for it ever since.     Nature as Last Consolation  Buried deep in me, I fancy, is a tiny Wordsworth or Thoreau, crying reedily to be let out. For when I imagine all else failing me, always I see myself finding my last delight in Nature herself. We will say that the world I have known is in ruins, my work is done, my family and friends are scattered, and I am a shambling old wreck of a fellow living on four-pence; nearly the worst has happened. But Nature, I tell myself, will still be there, and a... posted on May 2 2019 (6,602 reads)

with Mary for the last week of her life. A small team of friends shared the privilege of washing her hair, holding her, singing to her, and reading her own amazing poems to her. We played some rock and roll when we needed to. Lots of coffee. Lots of cookies. Lots of tears. In the days following Mary’s death, as we slowly tidied up the bedroom and tried to get used to the startling absence of her tiny body, surely we each took our own inventory of that spare room where she slept and worked for the last three years of her life—the work table and the typewriter, the twin bed and the night stand with her well-worn copy of A Year With Rumi, and the small yellow legal pad o... posted on May 26 2019 (32,218 reads)

since its inception, Mother’s Day continues to be a day of protest. Women have taken to the streets to call our attention to the injustices of war, poverty, inadequate healthcare, child labor, gun violence, and more. These are the fierce, socially engaged underpinnings of Mother’s Day. So this Mother’s Day, we invite you to honor the mother-figures in your life and also to marvel at the intricate web of dependence and care that holds us all. May we honor the work of taking care of each other. It is in the recognition of our profound interconnection with one another that we can rise up to protect what we hold most sacred. Let us be moved too by t... posted on May 12 2019 (8,482 reads)

barrels pressed tightly into his stomach — the militia of the rebel forces had snuck up on him under the veil of the dark and captured him in “solemn silence,” staring at his tie — “such a luxury was not fashionable in an anarchist area” — rather than his face. He recounts: My skin tightened. I waited for the shot, for this was the time of quick trials. But there was no shot. After a complete blank of a few seconds, during which the shifts at work appeared to dance in another universe — a kind of dream ballet — my anarchists, slightly nodding their heads, bid me precede them, and we set off, without hurry, across the lines of j... posted on Jul 7 2019 (7,856 reads)

to smoke, in part because they do not want to be criticized or reprimanded.” In other words, the power of a popular law is due partly to conformity. But conformity also carries with it the power to make human beings ignore their own consciences, sometimes to the point of committing atrocities. The book points to Stanley Milgram’s infamous experiment in which participants were told to deliver a series of electric shocks to another participant (actually an actor working as the researcher’s confederate), slightly increasing the intensity every time. While the experiment was a ruse, the participants didn’t know that. Milgram found that all of the pa... posted on Jun 17 2019 (4,006 reads)

the wider socio-economic decline that surrounds them? What is it about political life that turns so often and so quickly to violence instead of love? I think there’s a missing link in this equation that’s best described as cultivating equanimity. Equanimity runs deeper than the attitudes of non-judgmental acceptance and open curiosity that are advocated by most contemporary enthusiasts for mindfulness. It can buffer people against the harsh political and economic frameworks within which they live and work by offering each individual a unique intelligence. With more equanimity, mindfulness turns increasingly towards the needs of others, but why, and what exactly is ... posted on Jul 8 2019 (6,094 reads)

sit for 20 minutes to cultivate compassion. If we were to do so, our mind will change, our brain will change. What we are will change. So those are skills. They need to be, first, identified, then cultivated. What is good to learn chess? Well, you have to practice and all that. In the same way, we all have thoughts of altruistic love. Who doesn’t have that? But they come and go. We don’t cultivate them. Do you learn to piano by playing 20 seconds every two weeks? This doesn’t work. So why, by what kind of mystery, some of the most important qualities of human beings will be optimal just because you wish so? Doesn’t make any sense. I have a friend who is 63 years o... posted on Jun 19 2019 (9,072 reads)

for who we are. We can even set down many of the confines of how we have learned to identify ourselves in the world. We do not need to do, have, or be anything to be worthy of receiving our own acceptance and kindness. Instead, we can turn towards ourselves, extending the gifts of more merciful appreciation for every aspect of who we are, exactly as we are. All of it. Here. Now. Perfectly imperfect. Imperfectly perfect. It is hugely human – and culturally encouraged – to want to work on, change, refine, and try to “better” ourselves. But before any efforts toward self-improvement, personal transformation, or transcendence, there is great wisdom in first learning t... posted on Jul 28 2019 (9,082 reads)

questions rather than giving quick answers. We’ve also spent many years listening to others mainly to determine whether we agree with them or not. We don’t have time or interest to sit and listen to those who think differently than we do. It is very difficult to give up our certainties -- our positions, our beliefs, our explanations. These help define us; they lie at the heart of our personal identity. Yet I believe we will succeed in changing this world only if we can think and work together in new ways.  Curiosity is what we need. We don’t have to let go of what we believe, but we do need to be curious about what someone else believes. We do need to acknowledg... posted on Jul 9 2019 (9,703 reads)

out and include our attacker inviting them into our flow line. When we execute a technique the entire field flows along the line of the form. What does this soft fluid power imply for how we can live our lives? How can the understanding and insights we glean from engaging in physical pressure and the intensity of attacks in the dojo inform the way we interact off the mat? What I appreciate about this state of inclusiveness is that it is equally effective in martial as well as domestic and work situations—which can be equal or more challenging than attacks in training sessions. Some people can keep cool and calm on the mat but become violent in traffic. For a long time it has b... posted on Jul 18 2019 (9,615 reads)

in intelligence and agency. Poems might have legs. Wind might ask questions. Myths might enact themselves.  Seasoned or intrepid explorers of the imaginal might return to the everyday world with images or experiences that make no sense to the ordinary mind, but which nevertheless become guiding, even life-altering, encounters. Carl Jung’s The Red Book documents his explorations in the imaginal – his “fantasies”– from which he wove his life’s work. The imaginal world is breached or reached through the organ of perception called imagination – a mode of perception that lost value as the Western world privileged rational th... posted on Jul 25 2019 (8,466 reads)

28th, 2018 One morning I woke up with no voice, just a faint, breathy whisper. This would be upsetting anytime, but on this particular day it felt as if I were in a fairy tale. In a matter of hours, I was supposed to tell a story and teach mindfulness meditation at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan. And I couldn’t make a sound. In the middle of the working day, in a softly lit theater in a museum in New York, more than a hundred people of different age, gender, and realities were going to sit down and be still together.  The stories and guidance I wanted to offer were simple: I wanted to help them remember that that they were alive. Sati, the Pali word for mindful... posted on Aug 1 2019 (7,840 reads)

Morrison reflects on the notion of foreignness and the traversing of borders in light of our own disquieting feelings of otherness, whatever our national origin and citizenship, and the tremors of our crumbling belonging in an increasingly chaotic world: Excluding the height of the slave trade in the nineteenth century, the mass movement of peoples in the latter half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first is greater now than it has ever been. It is a movement of workers, intellectuals, refugees, armies crossing oceans, continents, immigrants through custom offices and hidden routes, speaking multiple languages of trade, of political intervention, of persecuti... posted on Aug 7 2019 (7,756 reads)

lives,” writes pioneering researcher Robert Emmons in his book Thanks! His studies suggest that gratitude can improve our health and relationships—making it one of the most well-studied and effective ways to increase our well-being in life. But prescribing gratitude to everyone is a problem: Most of what we know about it comes from studying Americans—and, specifically, the mainly white American college students from the campuses where researchers work. That creates a cultural bias in the science, and that’s why more and more researchers are exploring what gratitude looks and feels like in a range of cultures. They are studying how chi... posted on Aug 11 2019 (10,296 reads)

world than I will ever be. Childs honors the weight and magnitude of his encounters with creatures large and small, preserving the distance and mystery that comes with each meeting. He strives to convey in words what cannot be expressed in words, and in each essay I see one who does what I wish to do myself: To connect with respect, to speak for the voiceless, to bear witness to life and death in their eternal splendor. *** When I was in Primary One, the teacher handed out a worksheet that tasked us to group things as “animal”, “plant”, or “other.” It seemed like a simple enough task. With my black and yellow Staedler pencil, I quickly ... posted on Aug 15 2019 (5,663 reads)

them.” As far as tree plantation is concerned, he says, “Lagane wale bohot hai, bachane wale nahi. (There are many who plant, none to conserve).” Although he has managed to grow and nurture 40,000 trees, he has bigger plans, “If I get some official support and regular water supply, I would like to increase the number of trees to 40 lakh. These are my life, and till my death, I want to take care of them.” His message through his life’s work is to teach people to not cut trees. There are many who attempt to cut trees and steal the timber and Bhaiyyaram has to be alert at all times. This has raised the question of who would be respons... posted on Aug 26 2019 (8,748 reads)

so many of the freedoms and privileges associated with happiness?These are some of the questions we explored through Grateful Anyhow, a recent project in partnership with Prisoner Express (PE) that engaged approximately 350 incarcerated men and women in an exploration of the transformative power of gratefulness.  As part of the project, prisoners received articles, scientific studies, stories, and practices on gratefulness, along with questions for reflection from A Network for Grateful Living via PE. In response, participants were encouraged to share their thoughts and experiences in writing via letters that were mailed back to PE. The perspectives and stories that... posted on Aug 28 2019 (5,837 reads)

dramas change daily, survival belongs to the agile not the idle. We may think of play as optional, a casual activity. But play is fundamental to evolution. Without play, humans and many other animals would perish. Art by Christian Robinson from Leo: A Ghost Story It is hardly happenstance that the word “play” was central to how Einstein thought of the secret to his genius — he used the term “combinatory play” to describe how his mind works. Ackerman considers what it is that makes play so psychologically fruitful and alluring to us, plunging into its ancient cultural history: The world of play favors exuberance, license, aban... posted on Sep 16 2019 (6,750 reads)

used to believe that I was a very accepting person. But a few weeks ago, something happened at my workplace that made me recognize my own brokenness -- it helped me see the disconnect between my values, and how I respond in certain moments. I work at the front desk of a hotel. On multiple occasions over the past couple of weeks, a sex-worker reserved a room on our property. Sitting at the front desk I'd see her interacting with people in the corridor, I'd see her check-in and check-out. And I would have this incredibly palpable feeling of disgust come up whenever she walked by. Just catching sight of her would make me feel so low. I'd have this urge to get out of there or look ... posted on Sep 4 2019 (7,404 reads)