Category: Mindfulness
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From Generation to Generation
By the time I was born, both of my grandfathers had been gone for many years. My paternal grandmother died when I was a year old and my maternal grandmother turned 80 when I was a toddler. I believe she’d understood English fully, and likely spoke it well in younger years but, by the time…
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Letting Go and Holding On
One of the absolute highlights of my work life is having the opportunity to teach yoga to the elders who live in the communities where I work. We do chair yoga and, especially in the long term care setting, almost all of my yogis are in wheelchairs. I will tell you, without question, that these…
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Doing What’s Right
For those of us of the Jewish faith, we are about to begin a New Year. It is a time, as with the secular New Year, when we reflect on the year that is ending and the year that is ahead. In our Jewish tradition, we specifically focus, during the ten days between the New…
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In the Wee Hours
Sleeping has never been one of my abilities. I’m that light sleeper who hears every sound and wakes up and then struggles, often unsuccessfully, to try and go back to sleep. I’m up early every day, and it I make it to 5 am on the weekend I feel as if I’ve slept in! In…
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Addicted to Busy
I have never quite been able to figure out where my personal “off” switch is, physically or mentally. My mother’s most frequently used expression with me was “Would you please light somewhere?” She didn’t mean that in the “shine your light” sense but rather in the “please land and stop moving around” sense. Stillness has…
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Is Civility Dead?
There were a lot of behavioral norms drilled into me by my parents. And I passed them along to my children. As I was, they were taught to say “please” and “thank you” and “excuse me.” We all learned to be respectful of others, to treat one another with kindness and to remember that “we…
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When the Student is Ready
How often have we heard the expression, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” It’s one of those phrases I tend to grimace a bit at, feeling that “wait and see” is not really the way we make changes in our lives. And yet, I have come to realize that there is more…
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Living in Truth
Often I find that with a larger group, especially one that does not connect all that often, that starting a meeting with an “icebreaker” can be not just a good introduction but a way for folks to find points of commonality with one another. I see it as one more tool in the toolbox for…
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Baking and Leadership
Let’s start with the truth. When I was a freshman in college I had to call a friend to ask them how to boil water to make spaghetti. Truth! The only thing I ever had cooked in my life was scrambled eggs and that’s because scrambled eggs and popsicles constituted my senior year in high…
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Things I Know For Sure
There are a lot of things I don’t know. Maybe more than I do know. I will never claim to be an expert in many arenas. And I am okay with that. I know how to find answers, I know when I need someone with knowledge beyond my own to assist (at least most of…
With a Full Heart 