Tell me if this sounds familiar: You’re having an important conversation about something that really matters to you, with somebody who potentially matters even more than that.  There’s a disagreement, a misunderstanding, or otherwise some kind of a bump in the road, and you start to feel the anger swelling up in your body. Your […]

“Perhaps it will come, perhaps not; in the meantime it is not.” — Seneca Those are some wise words, Seneca.  Comforting, even.  But I still feel anxious. What are we actually supposed to do with those emotions when we can’t intellectualize them away?  The sensations of the body are not bumps in the road that […]

It’s October, and that means we’re emptying out the liquor cabinet and opening ourselves up to all the things we’ve been avoiding from November to September.  That’s right, it’s Sober October.  And you (my beloved reader) are curious about what your mind and body will feel like when they are unchanged and unchained. Even extremely […]

 When we live our lives behind a mask, we permit nobody else to know our authentic self. We forbid all who might criticize, compliment, like, love, or hate us from ever passing judgment by hiding behind a persona. This is, in moderation, healthy.  But it requires that we eventually take off the mask and act […]

In the time before the written word and civilization itself, we innately understood the power of ritual. Ritual was how we processed incomprehensible things. Through ritual, we remembered what was passed down to us, and through ritual, we decided what was passed on to the next.  We did not need to incorporate ritual into our […]

The calendar has made its sweet time getting here, but it is finally summer. We live in St. Petersburg, Florida. The sun is shining. It’s blue skies and ocean water that feels like stepping into a bath. We live where people vacation.  But our suffering doesn’t end just because we’re in a beautiful place at […]

Why did we start using social media in the first place? Now that Pandora’s box has been opened, it’s much easier to wonder than to understand why we desired this thing that has formed our thoughts, habits, and environment for the worse.  The unique selling proposition of these social media sites was that we could […]

If you’re an informed person who tries to pay attention to what’s going on, then you’ve probably noticed that we’re making less than our parents made to do more, the notion of peace seems to be on the verge of intellectual collapse, and the world is on fire.  So what are we supposed to do […]

When it comes to chronic illness, it can be hard to find any kind of relief. The physical pain adds to our emotional pain, and the emotional pain makes our physical pain almost unbearable. So with all this pain, it’s natural to wonder: When will the pain stop, and what do I have to do […]

Nobody wants to dust the kitchen cabinet, and even fewer people want to dust their cabinet of thoughts. Cleaning is a part of life, both figuratively and literally. It’s something that is unavoidable and often difficult to enjoy, but necessary to find wholeness and balance in our lives.  How can we use what we learn […]