How do we know when it’s a beautiful day? What makes us say so? I stood on the lawn the other evening and wondered. Why was I responding so deeply, why was I so moved? And why did I feel so much lighter, like a burden had been lifted? When I looked around, the answer seemed obvious: beauty, ... Read More
Yoga for Healing and Wholeness
“Stinkin’ thinkin’.” I remember hearing that phrase for the first time from a friend who was in a couple of different 12-Step groups. The saying points to something also understood in many spiritual circles, that the thinking mind—the part of us that lives in words and tries to figure things ... Read More
Epigenetics and Recovery
We live in interesting times in which things are changing faster than we can sometimes keep track of them. One of the places where this occurs is the field of medicine. The changes that are happening and about to happen there are truly amazing, and are bringing great hope to many that cures of ... Read More
Judaism and Recovery
In the interest of full disclosure, I am not Jewish; but having written here previously about aspects of Christian, Buddhist and Taoist spirituality as it impacts issues of addiction and recovery, and given how many members of the Jewish faith there are in the U.S. and the New York area, it only ... Read More
Mindfulness Apps for Recovery
There’s an old story that turns up all over the world that goes something like this: A young man (it’s an old story, so it’s almost always a man) travels miles over rough terrain and endures all kinds of hardships to reach a legendary temple or secret group of great spiritual masters. Often the ... Read More
Unorthodox Meditations
Do you remember your first time? The first time you tried to meditate, I mean. What did you think? I remember mine. I had found an unlikely paperback at my local drugstore, a book called You Forever by someone named T. Lobsang Rampa. I was only about 13 or 14 years old, and had never run across a ... Read More
Building Your Practice from the Ground Up
How are your New Year’s resolutions going? If you’re like most people, you may have to think for a second to remember what they were. There are so many jokes about resolutions because the universal human tendency is to drop them. We now know from scientific research that a lot of that has to do ... Read More
Whose Thoughts Are These? Addiction, Recovery and Buddhism
When I was in my freshman year in college, I had a professor of English who liked to start the first class of the semester with the question, “What are the books that changed your life?” Not “What books did you enjoy, or really love,” but “changed your life.” Even as a voracious reader, it took some ... Read More
A WINTER WORLD OF HOLIDAYS
Hanukkah Sameach! Merry Christmas! Habari Gani! Happy Holidays! However we say it—and there are many different ways—the idea of “happy” combined with “holidays” is a very, very old one. But in our consumer-driven culture, the holidays come at us so early, fast and hard that by the time they ... Read More
THANKFULNESS
There’s no getting around it: thankfulness is good for us. Damn! I don’t know about you, but I definitely have days when I just don’t feel all that thankful or grateful, when the guy when sits next to me on the bus drips water all over my previously dry pants, a favorite store is unexpectedly out ... Read More