"...a strange admixture of self and world..." You might be surprised to learn that the word "empathy" is a pretty new word—around mid-20th century—coined as a translation of the slightly older German word einfühlung, literally "feeling-in." Maybe its newness is why it can be a challenging idea to... Read More »

The fine movements of our fingers are one of our greatest gifts, and easily taken for granted. The power of our fingers to hold and manipulate is transferred through our wrists. Because of the many joints in this location, there is the potential for pain here, but also the potential for healing. ... Read More »

Your brain has a "feeding pattern" or direction that information flows. From the bottom or brainstem area toward the top of the brain, and from the back of the brain toward the frontal lobes, where conscious thoughts and decisions are "located." To improve the quality of your outputs--actions, th... Read More »

It's a popular meme-theme to buttress oneself or others when things are difficult: the caterpillar and butterfly image. Sometimes there's a cocoon stage in the tale too. It's a myth or story we can tell ourselves about not just who we are or what we are going through now, but also about who we wi... Read More »

Life is fear based. Once you start to get that, you don't have to fight fear, which is fighting yourself and life itself. You don't have to let go of fear, which is a necessary emotion and can't be let go of anyway, as if it were no longer useful. To try to do so is to waste energy in a futile e... Read More »

Here's a fuller version of that famous Bruce Lee quote:  "Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; you put water into a bottle it becomes the bott... Read More »

We know from yoga that one thing is always more than one thing. The world is more than one thing. Life is more than one thing. And so it is with health and disease. Narrowing it down further to the topic of bone density and osteoporosis, that too is more than one thing. Let's briefly look at a co... Read More »

A friend asked how important sequence was to me, and I thought that might be worth a few words here. I've always loved a good sequence in a yoga class, from an auspicious beginning to a developing plot line of poses leading to a culmination and satisfactory ending--just like in a good story. It'... Read More »

Howard Gardner proposed the theory of multiple intelligences--illustrated above, from here--to try to account for the many ways in which we can function and fluently engage life. None of them stand alone, really. We each have all of them to one degree or another. And each likely can be improved. ... Read More »

You want something. What do you want? It might be one thing, even something quite simple. Or it might be something deep and compelling and mysterious. But one thing, whatever it is, is always more than one thing. That's how the universe makes more of itself. That's how life makes more of itself... Read More »