The Heroic Journey

Sometimes the world has great opinions on how we should walk our paths, often for good reason. I recently was having a conversation with someone who apologized to me for the decision she had made in her choices. You see she thought I might think her “stupid” for choosing the path she chose and was surprised when I congratulated her on choosing her own way from a position of calm, centered, knowingness. When we have that “soul voice” within say, “this may not make sense to an

Feeling the fear and doing it anyway… What is it that makes some fear a healthy life sustaining experience and yet other fear is constrictive and restrictive? What about the times when we work through challenging times and no longer feel fear when we face them again? When I began as a road warrior, I was afraid of nearly everything except the teaching. I had never traveled extensively alone, particularly in a series of 3, 4 or 7 cities I had never before seen. I didn’t know

If you could save one object from your home if it became necessary to suddenly evacuate your home, what would you take and why? In the last several months, so many areas of the country have been impacted by events which caused devastating damage and even loss of life: historic floods, tornados, fires and hurricanes. The recent experience of Hurricane Sandy left many thousands of families without anything but the shirts on their backs and, if lucky, their families. More than o

Humans, as well as animals, are born with the blueprint of resilience. We are born with a predisposition to survive in order to keep the species thriving. Part of the program is to enable an organism to fight, flee or freeze, depending on the type and frequency of challenges and threats in its life. During the formative years, we become skilled at responding to certain types of threats. When humans and animals are repeatedly exposed to the same kinds of threats, their surviva

Mindfulness brings us into the body, into the present moment. The practice – even after years – can be challenging as the “hamster wheel of the mind” goes into high gear. Nature is such a smorgasbord of sensory delight, being mindful is much easier. Journaling the experience afterwards also helps the immune system further. This is an excerpt from my journal after one of these experiences. It is 7am and I have three hours before I teach. With a steaming cup of coffee, I sit on