It's swelteringly hot outside these days. I have noticed that when I am walking or running outside in the heat of the day, I am sometimes preoccupied with the oppression of the heat. Some days I have a hard time enjoying what I am doing outside because I get stuck on thinking about the heat and how to relieve it. If I am going somewhere with air conditioning, I start to think about how nice it will be once I get inside...
Read MoreHappy 4th of July! One of my favorite childhood memories is spending Independence Day in my mom's hometown of Algonac, Michigan. In Algonac, the week leading up to the 4th was always the "Pickerel Tournament," which consisted of a very rickety but fun carnival and an ongoing fishing tournament,which I completely ignored. The big finale for the week was always the 4th of July parade...
Read MoreWe had the wonderful pleasure of hosting a family of robins on our family room overhang this month. It began when we saw the mother robin frantically putting together nests in four potential sites, scattering a huge pile of sticks and shiny threads on our patio. She apparently decided against someone's old birthday balloon because she left it dangling in front of our window. She did finally settle on the "best" location, the one closest to our kitchen window...
Read MoreI was lying in bed one morning last week with the clatter of heavy rain on the roof above my head and the sweet coziness of a warm comforter, when I realized that it was already 6:15, and the Wednesday morning sitting meditation was beginning at the studio in 15 minutes. At that point it was really too late to get to sitting on time, but I considered, very briefly, leaping out of bed, throwing on some clothes, and racing over...
Read MoreSpring has arrived! How wonderful to see the daffodils blooming and to feel the sun on our faces again. And at the same time, we had more tragedy than usual this past month: the terrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and, closer to home, the tragedy in our local yoga community at Lululemon in Bethesda. How can we reconcile the beauty and excitement of spring with the horror and suffering of events like these?
Read More
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting my family in Michigan. While I'm there, I always try to have a sandwich at Olga's Kitchen restaurant.
Read MoreHappy February! I hope that you have endured the freezing temperatures and ice this past month, and have been staying warm with your yoga practice. After the death of our 12-year-old chocolate Lab about a month ago, our 11-year-old Standard Poodle started acting strangely. Our dogs had been together for nearly 11 years. In 2000, when we brought home Gus, an 8-week-old poodle, he met Coco, who was 18 months old at that time.
Read MoreHappy New Year! I hope that all of you enjoyed your holiday, and got at least a little extra time off and rest. I enjoyed having my kids at home, and hanging around the house more. I also had the opportunity to watch a few movies, and one that I particularly enjoyed was Despicable Me. It was a hilarious animated movie about a self-satisfied villain who adopts three adorable little girls...
Read MoreLast week, several days before our Thanksgiving feast, I happened to be in a local store, and was surprised to see a lot of Christmas decorations and displays. Well, I wasn't completely surprised, having watched this trend toward seasonal overlap growing over the last few years. What was surprising, though was that the Christmas displays helped illuminate some teachings I heard from Rod Stryker, Cyndi Lee, and Sean Johnson...
Read MoreCan you believe that it is already November? The fall seems to be going so quickly, and Thanksgiving is only a couple of weeks away. Thanksgiving has been one of my favorite holidays for many years, especially when we traveled to Michigan to enjoy Thanksgiving with family. I think that one of the reasons I liked it so much was that all we did was arrive and enjoy...
Read MoreOne of the joys of having older children is that we learn so much from them. This summer, one of my daughters read an inspiring book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide and recommended that I read it also. Reading that book started me on a journey toward a deeper understanding of some of the most painful and difficult issues we face today, including the sex trafficking of young women around the world...
Read MoreI hope that you had a very relaxing summer! I had the pure joy of visiting the Caribbean, seeing family, and going on retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh. In my last e-news, I wrote about whether or not it's best to always share our suffering, or if it's more productive to share only our joys. So it's funny because this month I have been meditating on perceptions. And perhaps underneath the question about what to share with others is how we interpret our experiences...
Read MoreThis past week I received an unexpected letter from an old friend of my mom's. My mom passed away, quite unexpectedly, about 5 years ago at the young age of 71. My mom, Sally, was a vibrant, energetic, and positive person, who did a whole lot for a lot of people, and was well-loved by many. My mom's friend described some of my mom's wonderful qualities - always making the best of every situation, her enormous capacity to care for others, the importance of her family...
Read MoreIn June, I had the rare and humbling opportunity to speak on a panel with three very distinguished Buddhists and peace activists: Colman McCarthy, Hugh Byrne, and Bill Aiken. The panel was part of the first annual BuddhaFest, and there were over 100 people in attendance. I agreed to speak on the panel because a friend of mine recommended me, I was in a good mood when they asked, and I wanted to encourage myself to move out of my comfort zone...
Read MoreSo I have been in a birthday mode lately. In addition to eating good food and cake, there is a tradition of offering good wishes to the birthday celebrant. We say things like: I wish you a happy birthday, I wish you another year of health, or I wish you a relaxing day. And I was thinking about how birthday wishes are a lot like metta, or loving-kindness phrases. Some of the phrases we use for practicing metta are: May you be happy, May you be healthy, and May you live with ease...
Read More
About a month ago, we planted some new lettuce and peas, and were very excited to discover that many of the heartier plants had wintered over and were starting to provide us with chard, mustard greens, spinach and even some very small broccoli.
Read MoreThis morning when our contractor arrived at our house, it made me cry. And it wasn't simply the cost of renovation making me sad. It was my son's move from his old room to a new one that did it. You wouldn't think such a small thing would be so triggering. Standing in my son's room at 7 am this morning, I looked around at all of the stuff that he was letting go--the cowboy rug and cowboy boots, the Goosebumps books...
Read MoreThis morning I saw white crocuses coming up in my neighbor's yard. For me, crocuses are the harbinger of spring, regardless of whether the groundhog saw his shadow or not. When I see their tiny delicate flowers hanging on even more delicate stems, I have faith that the warm weather is on its way, even as I step through mounds of dirty snow.
Read MoreI was lying in my living room the other afternoon, enjoying a fire and the coziness of a warm house in the winter, with the sun shining into the windows. Because of the holidays, we had moved our sofa into a new location, and I had an unusual new perspective of the living room at this hour of the day.
Read More