understand the root causes of the pathologies we see today which impact all of us but affect Brown, Black and Poor people more intensely, we have to examine the foundations of this society which began with COLONIZATION. To me, to be colonized means to be disconnected and disintegrated — from our ancestry, from the earth, from our indigeneity, our earth-connected selves. We all come from earth-connected people, people who once lived in deep connection to the rhythms of nature. I believe it is not a coincidence that the colonization of this land happened at the same time that Europeans were burning hundreds of thousands of witches, those women who carried the traditi... posted on Oct 11 2021 (3,918 reads)

with particular personality traits or career paths may suffer burnout more easily, writes Moss. For example, those who have higher levels of neuroticism (over-worry), conscientiousness (especially if it leads to perfectionism—a potential problem), and introversion (in a highly social office) may be particularly susceptible. Also, health care workers and teachers have higher levels of burnout than other professions, says Moss, because of the nature of their work and the personality types drawn to those jobs. And their potential stressors have only increased since the pandemic, as teachers scrambled to switch to remote teaching and health ... posted on Nov 22 2021 (5,401 reads)

adds: The reasons for depression are not so interesting as the way one handles it, simply to stay alive. Perhaps Albert Camus was right in asserting that “there is no love of life without despair of life,” but this is a truth hard to take in and even harder to swallow when one is made tongueless by depression. In an entry from October 6, still clawing her way out of the pit of darkness, Sarton considers the only cure for despair she knows: Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? K... posted on Nov 4 2021 (5,215 reads)

go into a neglected tangle. Throughout the growing season I pass by this fallow spit of wildness and it feeds my somewhat fierce soul. In early autumn, when I am obsessed with our latest harvest of slim, white-stockinged leeks and golden beets, I look across the ordered rows of the garden to that far tangle of seedy cow parsnip and dry skunkweed and my wild roots stir back to life. 2. Garden Organically My second principle is to garden organically, always within the ample embrace of nature, without relying on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides. Organic gardening and ecological farming is rooted in and encourages local stewardship and protection of land and water reso... posted on Nov 19 2021 (5,584 reads)

are they related? Their source is the same. With no boundaries, the two are indistinguishable, each embracing the myriad forms. Not discriminating between coarse and fine, how can you be attached to either? The great way is unperturbed, being neither easy nor difficult. Those with a narrow view are filled with doubt, going in circles quickly or slowly. When grasping overcomes you, you are sure to go astray. Yielding with ease, the heart neither comes nor goes. If your nature is in accord with the way, you wander freely without fear. Caught in thoughts, you betray reality. Trapped in delusion, you miss the point. Weary from what is not clear, what is the use ... posted on Nov 28 2021 (4,326 reads)

learn to use slow, deep breathing to quiet anxiety and agitation, Shaking and Dancing to melt trauma-frozen bodies, surface buried emotions that need tending, and feel physical and emotional freedom. As these techniques bring them into greater physical and psychological balance, they are able to successfully use all the other tools and techniques in Transforming Trauma—guided imagery, creating a trauma-healing diet, using biofeedback and genograms (family trees), accessing gratitude and nature’s healing powers, and expressing themselves in words, drawings, and movement. They are able as well to more effectively reach to others—family and friends as well as professional co... posted on Nov 30 2021 (4,919 reads)

being. And you’re not in a position to challenge them either—when you’re already vulnerable. Yeah, I felt very small a lot of the time. And I just expected that was normal, that they are the heroes. I remember one of the first pediatricians we met was trying to explain chromosomes to me. We had been living in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for two weeks and Evie had undergone so many tests, and he was trying to explain the long and short arms of the chromosome, the nature of splitting and how it all works. I was sleep deprived, recovering from a caesarean and emotionally exhausted, and I thought he was telling me that Evie had short arms. I was really confused b... posted on Jan 16 2022 (4,016 reads)

been, I want to say, distracted by external forces or overly placed their attention on teachers that have maybe gone astray and made people question their own practice, I felt like we all need a practice that is entirely our own. TS: Beautiful. Now I want to ask a question that I could imagine is part of the space right now listening to this. So belonging belongs to me here, the belly, feeling embodied, feeling at home. But look, when I get up off of my chair or stop walking in nature being in my belly, I’m facing a world where there’s so much injustice, where I’m clearly being considered part of the out group and discriminated against, and there are struct... posted on Jan 18 2022 (4,204 reads)

move closer. Some of these patterns were then used to create realistic looking animal groups in films, starting with Batman Returns in 1992 and its swarms of bats and “army” of penguins. Crucially this model did not require any long-range guidance, or supernatural powers – only local interactions. Reynolds’s model proved a complex flock was indeed possible through individuals following basic rules, and the resulting groups certainly “looked” like those in nature.From this starting point an entire field of animal movement modelling emerged. Matching these models to reality was spectacularly achieved in 2008 by a group in Italy who were able to film star... posted on Feb 18 2022 (5,323 reads)

of kind others—has always been our cellular superfuel.” Practice awe When we experience awe, we not only feel happier, we also have a sense of ourselves as part of something bigger than us. It can help us be more creative and even improve our immune system. The perspective and creative problem-solving that comes with experiences of awe, argues Williams, can be good for heartache. One way to find awe is by tuning into beauty. For Williams, a nature enthusiast, that meant spending time in natural settings. Staring at sunsets, looking closely at the intricacies of flowers, or doing a full-on wilderness retreat helped shift her mind away fro... posted on Apr 13 2022 (7,864 reads)

I want to be with? Am I living in the part of the world I want to be living in, with the partner?” Etc. From your perspective, how do we each make the most use of a time that’s liminal. JSB: [We have] to be aware of, are we just going through motions and collecting a paycheck? Is it something that matters to us personally, because we get involved with the people that we work with? I mean, you can be someone, for example, who’s a gardener who happens to love nature and watch plants grow. Well, that person may not be making much money compared to a salesperson of an object that is just something that you sell to get a commissioner on. And you don’t r... posted on May 9 2022 (4,168 reads)

she no longer can compute the simplest 1+1 equations. So what remains? What remains with so much loss of body and mental function? How do we value a person who no longer is a “productive” member of society and in fact takes enormous resources to support? What I have had a deep privilege to find out is that her value is not ONE IOTA diminished. I see that with the right attitude, those that surround her feel a sense of both duty and honor to care for her with such attention. By the nature of her physical and mental condition, we are asked to be 100 percent present to her needs throughout the day and night. While it can be tiring at times it is also brings such depth of unspeakab... posted on May 26 2022 (3,540 reads)

unfussy gladnesses readily available in the now, any now. A century after Hermann Hesse extolled “the little joys” as the most important habit for fully present living, Sophie’s list became not an emblem of expectancy but an invitation to presence — not a deferral of life but a celebration of it, of the myriad marvels that come alive as soon as we become just a little more attentive, a little more appreciative, a little more animated by our own elemental nature as “atoms with consciousness” and “matter with curiosity.” â„–5: hugging a friend Sophie began sharing the illustrated meditations on her Instag... posted on May 17 2022 (8,383 reads)

and two other nursing slave mothers that he received adequate nourishment.” When it became amazingly clear that Blyden’s novel was going to finally be available in print, I asked a dear friend, Brandyn Adeo, to write an Afterword for it, in which he takes this powerful story that occurs in 1850 up to the present moment. These words from the Afterward point us to a vision for the future that I know Blyden would also embrace: “In Jackson’s world, the hegemonic nature of white supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy is neither an inevitability nor our destiny. Just as Jackson exposes the evils of systemic racism and white supremacy, he also discloses what Ross Gay... posted on May 31 2022 (2,832 reads)

by the mindfulness work and spiritual practices peacebuilders have been engaging in over the past decades. "I now believe that my own liberation as a Palestinian is not only about ending the Israeli military occupation, but also about addressing all aspects of violence—be they political, social, economic or environmental. Nonviolence is not a tactic to be taken out of the box when it seems fit to use. It is a way of life." Recently, he has been exploring the connection to nature as a peacebuilder’s guide and a comfort—to find the sacred understanding and messages that come through the elements of water and land. Sami and HLT are working with other partners ... posted on Jun 7 2022 (2,257 reads)

canon.  Part of my personal journey has been about operating from a place of empathy and grace for myself in order to expand this container, this vessel, the spirit that holds the whole of my identity, so I can set free the joy within. Rage isn’t going anywhere. Grief isn’t either. What I have to do is be self-aware enough to see when those emotions are about to harm me, and turn my altruism and compassion onto myself.  Some of that work is definitely somatic in nature: identifying joy in the body so we can call it up when we need it. But some of it is just some good ol’ soul work: unlearning the generational response to pleasure that often says too muc... posted on Jun 8 2022 (2,828 reads)

Alexander’s insistence that “it is less about music being scientific and more about the universe being musical.” To discern the neural correlates of improvisation, scientists observed Montero’s brain under three conditions: playing scales, the most prescriptive of all musical structures; playing a memorized Bach piece; and improvising from an initial Bach prompt. They found that the Default Mode Network — the same brain region which time in nature unlooses to make us more creative and which psychedelics shake up — lit up in an entirely different way when she improvised rather than playing from memory. Improvisatio... posted on Jul 10 2022 (2,751 reads)

back on his long and luminous life at age ninety-three, the great cellist Pablo Casals held up one great task before humanity: “to make this world worthy of its children” — those inheritors of the present and living emissaries of the future, whose souls, in Kahlil Gibran’s memorable words, “dwell in the house of tomorrow.” To make of that house a harmonious home — for our own children, and the children of every platypus and every redwood — is the one great calling that unites us all across the infinite divides of our fractured present. One small country, in which 0.0002% of the world’s population lives in on... posted on Aug 6 2022 (3,262 reads)

it by looking—I was the youngest of eleven kids, scrawny and nearly blind in one eye. My father died in a horrific streetcar accident when I was two, and our sole income for years was the small monthly check that arrived in our mailbox courtesy of FDR's recently created social security fund. But I knew I was lucky. I was raised by a mother who gave me a voice. Mary Olivia Gaughan was a quiet, beautiful woman with a magnificent face. She was gentle and easy. Peace and calm were her nature. Nothing rocked her in the essentials: her God, her faith, her belief in our people, her belief in our need to survive and thrive. She was always good, always simple, and an always-present focu... posted on Aug 24 2022 (2,440 reads)

18, 2015 “Drumming may be the oldest form of active meditation known to humanity.” What could meditation and drumming possibly have in common? I’ve been asking myself this question ever since I heard world-famous sound healing expert Jill Purce say “The purpose of sound is silence.” First, both meditation and drumming help us get out of our heads and into our hearts. They just go about it in different ways. In meditation, placing our attention on the breath occupies the mind. In drumming, the rhythm becomes a mantra that captures our attention. You can’t drum while thinking. Both act as mind sweepers; to clear the mental space of worries and n... posted on Sep 6 2022 (4,464 reads)