There is a large element of chance in creativity, but it is most likely to occur if the mind is prepared for it. These suggestions help prime the mind for creative output: Document your ideas. Ideas are thoughts and thoughts are fleeting. You can’t begin to imagine how many good ideas you have until you...Continue Reading

I just got back from a road trip to UCSB to see the Dalai Lama. The morning lecture was titled, “The Nature of the Mind,” and after it was all said and done it was essentially it was about the importance of practicing lengthening the space between thoughts, through meditation. By training the mind to...Continue Reading

Yoga contains a densely rich philosophy that is traditionally recognized as being most successfully transmitted from guru to student. I did not come to yoga from a road out of India. I was raised in Marin County, in Northern California in the sixties and seventies in a place where free love, drug use, and the...Continue Reading

‘Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action.’ If you attend my classes regularly, this is a phrase that many of us have become accustomed to. I began saying it at the end of every class after hearing one of my teachers say it a number of years ago, but I wanted to know where it came...Continue Reading

In May my husband’s half-brother Grant was killed in a naval helicopter accident off the coast of San Diego, leaving behind a wife and two small sons. When our family arrived at the funeral we discovered that Grant’s friends had spent over a week building a wooden Viking boat. It had a carved dragon’s head...Continue Reading

When ‘Eat Pray Love’ by Elizabeth Gilbert came out two years ago, it spoke to thousands upon thousands of people, including me. As a result, I conceived yoga retreats to Italy last June and Bali last month while joining my first teacher, Sherri Baptiste’s journey through India last October (www.powerofyoga.com). I have recently concluded my...Continue Reading

Over the weekend my husband Will and I celebrated our wedding anniversary by driving south on highway one and having lunch on the edge of the Big Sur coast overlooking the ocean. I’m telling him about a review I read of a book by anthropologist, Helen Fisher on the origin of romantic love. She states...Continue Reading

I am spending these last days of 2008 in my basement… cleaning, paring down… And being thankful. And here is how it began: Three and a half years ago while Liam was a baby, I had had just moved into our new house and had to take a quick trip to Portland. A little uncomfortable...Continue Reading

I spent Thanksgiving weekend with my in-laws on the Suwannee River in Florida on their pontoon boat looking for manatees. And I haven’t been on a boat since my trip to India last month. My father-in-law has lung cancer and he has just discovered that it has traveled to the kidneys and liver. He was...Continue Reading

The first days of summer have presented me with a very clear theme through such events as the recall of red toxically painted Thomas the Trains made in China, (which means that James #5, my son Liam’s favorite, could potentially poison him), a no-holds-barred geyser in the front yard from a broken pipe at 2am...Continue Reading