Li, MD, is a physician and author whose decades-long personal healing journey through a disabling autoimmune illness required her to question her medical training. Through extensive experimentation with complementary approaches to Western medicine, she ultimately embraced the principles of integrative and functional medicine and wove together intuition and science toward a brave new medicine which allowed her to unlock her body’s innate potential to heal. In these unique times of pandemic, it has become clear that the primary difference between people who develop serious illness from COVID-19 and those who have mild to no symptoms is the strength of their immune syste... posted on Apr 2 2020 (45,413 reads)

Marilyn Lacey, third from left, raises her hands with South Sudanese refugee women in celebration of the micro-loans provided by Mercy Beyond Borders. They had just draped Sister Marilyn in blue and put a bracelet on her wrist when they spontaneously grabbed her arms and began singing. (Courtesy of Mercy Beyond Borders/Alison Wright) Feb 24, 2020 Every Eucharist includes time for an offering of gifts. Here in the U.S., that's almost always the moment to contribute money. I've experienced other cultures where it can include contributing fresh produce from one's farm or home-baked goods to share. In South Sudan, instead of the collection basket being passed a... posted on Apr 4 2020 (7,774 reads)

of intricately interconnected relations. As the Persian Sufi poet Saadi spoke almost 800 years ago: “Adam's children are limbs of one body / That in creation are made of one gem. / When life and time hurt a limb, / Other limbs will not be at ease. / You who are not sad for the suffering of others, / Do not deserve to be called human.” 2. Everything prepared us for this moment. The wings of our rituals, circles, meditation hours, dhikr invocations, mantras and pilgrimages have carried us to this point in time. We feel grateful for the anchoring power of those practices. They support us to stay present in the midst of chaos and turmoil, be it inside or outside. T... posted on Apr 5 2020 (64,771 reads)

every crisis of my life, learning has helped me find my way thru. That means paying attention, allowing myself to feel as well as think, looking at things from different angles, gathering the best info available, trying to connect the dots, and “living the questions” when the answers elude me. That’s why I love this excerpt from T.H. White’s novel “The Once and Future King,” based on the legend of King Arthur. The wizard Merlyn, who’s been entrusted with educating the young Arthur, is speaking to the future king at what we'd call a "teachable moment." As Americans and world citizens, we’re at a teachable moment called &qu... posted on Apr 6 2020 (17,355 reads)

August 2015, my husband was unexpectedly diagnosed with a one in a million potentially fatal condition whose causes are largely unknown and that western medicine has no dependable cure for. Just days earlier he’d carried a wheelchair-bound friend up the stairs to our home. He’d tossed a Frisbee, climbed a steep hill, given a high-level presentation at work. To say we did not see this coming is an understatement. We explored alternative options, and met remarkable practitioners of Ayurveda, acupuncture, and more. We entered a period that in retrospect felt like an open-ended meditation retreat. My husband's bone marrow suppression resulted in acutely low immunity, It re... posted on Apr 8 2020 (10,995 reads)

both inspire and baffle me. The thought that a caterpillar can crawl into a sac made of its own body and dissolve its form and come out as a butterfly is a cliched image of transformation, but holy crap. Stop for a moment and really think about that. Does the caterpillar know this is going to happen? If it does that shows some tremendous trust. If it doesn't, then that shows some incredible courage. It just hangs out there, isolating itself from the rest of the world and changing in ways it can never understand. Does a caterpillar see a butterfly and go "that will be me one day?" So yes, we are all heading into our chrysalises. We have all climbed into our... posted on Apr 9 2020 (10,743 reads)

by Michelle Urra Two years ago, I had an ectopic pregnancy. It was sudden and unexpected, and left me reeling. It happened during this time of year. The weather was slowly turning. The days suddenly getting longer. I sat in our new backyard and read and deep-breathed and cried. I scooted my chair to chase the sun across the lawn. I watched spring outside my living room window, the women in their sundresses and sandals. Their joy felt a lifetime away from my bitterness. I waited. I waited to see if my body would erupt. This is what these days remind me of. These days of waiting and foreboding. I sit and wait. But there’s one difference—this time, the wh... posted on Apr 11 2020 (13,046 reads)

the time we’re 60, we will have been alive for almost 22,000 days on this planet, rarely, if ever, stopping to watch just one. By immersion into nature in solitude, we allow the natural human to become entrained to the nature of the planet we are part of. On the 7th day, my mind was flowing at the speed of sea fog. Or maybe that was the description of my nervous system. I felt so present with a gentle flow — and my mind felt open to whatever arises. Good stuff. I had been camping in solitude in nature — on a hill over the ocean on the coast of California — as I have done twice a year for the past 20+ years. I jokingly call it my “People Fast&rd... posted on Apr 13 2020 (7,315 reads)

we grow accustomed to life under lockdown, we are discovering the richness that can emerge from the quiet, contemplative nature of solitude. Hoping to tap into the inner wisdom of our collective attempt to find light amidst darkness, writer Emily Rose Barr asked one simple question of individuals across the globe: What are you doing that's bringing a little extra joy, light, or laughter to your days? As the answers poured in, she realized that perhaps the paradoxes of our time -- hope and fear, connection and isolation, anger and compassion -- are not meant to be reconciled, but simply to be lived. Read more to learn how the discomfort of uncertainty invites us to take care ... posted on Apr 29 2020 (8,085 reads)

from "Listen with the Ear of the Heart: An Autobiography" I can't remember exactly when I first began the ritual of stealing into my parents bedroom to 'say' Mass. But I can recall vividly the moment when the whole fantasy fell apart. Every day, around 4 o'clock, that parental bedroom became a private chapel where I 'said' rather than 'heard', Mass. The centrepiece of that room was a small fireplace of brown and grey tiles, which faced the big bay window. I would stand up on the little ledge of the fireplace and being ahead of my time, face out towards the congregation. The gangly oak tree outside danced and sang. 'For you shall... posted on May 5 2020 (5,552 reads)

County school bus driver Paul Cochran loads his bus with food boxes that he will deliver to students in Charleston, West Virginia. PHOTO BY BRIAN FERGUSON / 100 DAYS IN APPALACHIA On any day in Appalachia, you can find gifts in front of houses, left on porches for the people inside: mushrooms just foraged, cookies freshly baked. The porch is an extension of the home in Appalachia—not only a gathering spot for conversation, but a traditional sharing place. If you want to exchange tools, plants, or hand-me-downs with your neighbor: you put them on the porch. In times of struggle, porches are the vessel to deliver food: frozen meals to new parents, casseroles for griev... posted on May 16 2020 (5,275 reads)

from Resilient Threads: Weaving Joy and Meaning into Well-Being, from Chapter 3, “Connecting the Dots.” A Mother/Physician with the Multiple Hats Syndrome Despite the neighborly support, I was stretched thin with all the hats I wore, striving to perfection in every role: mother, sister, daughter, wife, physician, teacher, friend, colleague, acquaintance, and so on. For seventeen years I left home at six in the morning with both children plus three or four other neighborhood children in the carpool. I’d drop the girls off at the girls’ school, the boys at the boys’ school, then come to work. After a long day at work, I would pick them up and d... posted on May 18 2020 (5,665 reads)

centuries, individualism or the notion that every human individual has intrinsic value has underlined ideas about societal organisation, the economy and justice. Recently, however, the primacy of the individual’s inalienable rights and freedoms has come under immense pressure. Individualism in the West originated from the Enlightenment. It believes in the moral worth of the individual and that his/ her interests should take precedence over the state or the social group. This birthed laissez faire capitalism, in which the individual is a free market agent. Western style individualism has had its greatest run since World War 2. Even with large parts of Europe behind the Iron Cu... posted on May 21 2020 (8,503 reads)

Prison Mindfulness Institute's mission is to provide prisoners, prison staff and prison volunteers, with the most effective, evidence-based tools for rehabilitation, self-transformation, and personal & professional development. In particular, they provide and promote the use of proven effective mindfulness-based interventions (MBI’s). Their dual focus is on transforming individual lives as well as transforming the corrections system as a whole in order to mitigate its extremely destructive impact on families, communities and the overall social capital of our society. The below text is available for download as a PDF on their website. Composed by the Buddhist Mast... posted on May 31 2020 (19,838 reads)

interesting thing about the book, is that — I believe, when bodies of culture come up to me and talk to me, if a black woman or Indigenous woman or somebody comes up to me and talks to me, the one thing that they all say is, “I been thinking this my whole life, and then, when I read it in your book, it made me feel like I wasn’t crazy” — because racialization makes us walk around like we’re crazy, like the things that are vibratorially happening to us, the images that are happening, the meaning, all of that different type — the fact that we walk around with this braceness, because we’re infected with this idea that the white body is the supr... posted on Jun 6 2020 (19,265 reads)

by Filipe Leme from Pexels Phyllis Cole-Dai is a writer and poet, perhaps best known for perhaps best known for 'The Emptiness of Our Hands', a spiritual memoir chronicling the 47 days that she and co-author James Murray practiced "being present" while living by choice on the streets of Columbus, Ohio. On her 58th birthday earlier this year, she wrote 58 one-line pandemic prayers and crafted them into a poem. See the text below. Perhaps it will give you a boost. You can listen to Phyllis read the poem here or download it here. ON MY 58TH BIRTHDAY: 58 PANDEMIC PRAYERS May we all survive to another birthday. May we greet the s... posted on Jul 2 2020 (45,518 reads)

powell is one of the foremost public intellectuals in the areas of civil rights, racism, ethnicity, housing and poverty. Despite a distinguished career, powell spells his name in lowercase on the simple and humble idea that we are part of the universe, not over it. He has introduced into the public lexicon the concepts of “othering and belonging.” For powell, "othering" hurts not only people of color, but whites, women, animals and the planet itself, because certain people are not seen in their full humanity. Belonging is much more profound than access; “it’s about co-creating the thing you are joining” rather than having to conform to rul... posted on Jul 18 2020 (5,976 reads)

from The Courage Way: Leading and Living with Integrity by the Center for Courage & Renewal and Shelly L. Francis (Berrett-Koehler, 2018). Fight. Flee. Freeze. Flock. But for each stress reaction, an option exists to get us out of our corners: fortify. As when we take vitamins and essential minerals, we can fortify ourselves for the hard times. When fortified, we can choose how to respond instead of simply reacting, and our choices come from a healthier, more self-aware stance. Fortitude is another word for courage. When Thomas Aquinas wrote about bravery in the thirteenth century, he used the Latin word fortitudo, and held that courage was a disposition required for ever... posted on Jul 22 2020 (6,275 reads)

Scotson is an artist-turned-neuroscientist, and founder of the Linda Scotson Technique (LST) -- an approach that has restored functionality and well-being in the lives of thousands of people navigating a wide-range of health conditions, including autism, brain injuries, anxiety, hypertension and much more. Three days after his birth, Linda Scotson's son Doran was given a terrible prognosis. His back arched, his hands were fisted, his eyes crossed, he couldn't hear. She was told that he had severe athetoid cerebral palsy and severe bilateral hearing loss.  His doctors explained that he would never be able to sit, stand, walk independent... posted on Jul 30 2020 (13,824 reads)

following piece has been adapted from Thrive Global I first met Master Mingtong Gu 8 years ago. A friend had invited me to his studio in Petaluma, CA, for a qigong workshop. Qi (“chee”) means life-force energy, gong means cultivation. Slow, easy movements. Low risk enough. And evidence-based. I was a doctor of internal medicine, trained to think critically and methodically, cautious of anything that might fall into the realm of “miracles.”  But I was also desperate. I had suffered for years with complex autoimmune illnesses, including Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and chronic fatigue syndrome—the shadow conditions of Western medicine. Despite conv... posted on Aug 3 2020 (14,368 reads)