In just four weeks, we’ll be celebrating the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year. Pre-pandemic, this time of year always felt frenetic. We were all […]
Metaphysics
WONDER LAND
The Year of the Rat
Why do we assign such menacing imagery to this critter?
CAMBRIDGE — Two days ago, while I sat on my bed talking on the phone, a rat scrambled across my bedcovers and slipped down between the mattress and the wall. […]
BODY/MIND
Remixing the Basics
When the source of pain is hiding in old routines, it’s time to get out of the groove
After 15 years of both classical and new-age yoga training, I still find my home practice beginning the same way. Somewhere in the first five minutes: tabletop, on hands and […]
WONDER LAND
The Swan
What does it mean to try to breathe inner peace into others?
I’d just left Chinatown after reclining in a chair for hours inside a state-of-the-art dental school. Each white cubicle featured an oversized nature photo, and all the while I’d been […]
SAVASANA
Wednesdays With Janis
Sometimes a student is the best teacher
It was in some ways not an unusual invitation, from one yoga teacher to another: “I have a really special client that I’d like you to meet,” my colleague wrote. […]
UP A CREEK
Occupy August
Troubleshooting the peak season, with guided meditations
August. The balmy bliss of sandy sheets. This month requires a certain je ne sais quoi when waiting to get a spot off Ocean View Drive with a pack of […]
IMPROVISATION
Finding the Balance
To come to an agreement with death, I had to make a new agreement with life
One day in June, my wife and I left our cottage to walk straight out the mouth of the Herring River in Eastham. Low tide had exposed acres of sand […]
METAPHYSICS: PERSONAL HISTORY
Ending Where You Began
A journey without travel: irony and contradictions
…I am waiting to get some intimations of immortality by recollecting my early childhood and I am waiting for the green mornings to come again youth’s dumb green fields come […]
BODY/MIND
How Breathing Control Can Improve Your Health
It’s as plain as the nose on your face
There is much that we can’t control. This has always been true, of course, but it’s never been more apparent than now, in both our personal sphere and in the […]
METAPHYSICS: THE LONG VIEW
Lessons of a Horrible Year
2020 taught us much about grief, self-deception, and hope
TRURO — Philosophy trains the mind to take the long view of things. You try to take yourself out of the picture and see things as they truly are, undistorted […]
BODY/MIND
In the Spirit of Sangha, Don’t Go It Alone
With Covid depleting our social capital, mutual aid is good for your health
“See you Friday night at Sangha!” Hugh said to me on the way out the door. I looked at the schedule on the back of my manual and sure enough: […]
WHILE I WAS SLEEPING
Don’t Riot, Dance
In a time of disparagement, we need resistance fired by love
Some folks are legends, some are magic, some magnificent. Terry and Jo Harvey Allen, longtime residents of Santa Fe, N.M., are all that and more. A brilliant songwriter, Terry has […]
BODY/MIND
Isolation Workarounds
Quarantine pods, weighted blankets, and Earthing our way through
I’ve learned some things navigating this new normal as a single person living in a one-bedroom apartment. One is that there are things we can do to adapt and get […]
MATTERS OF FAITH
Finding New Ways to Worship
“New occasions teach new duties,” James Russell Lowell declared in a poem from which was drawn a familiar hymn, “Once to Every Man and Nation.” That sentiment is providing a […]
BODY/MIND
The Inner Marathon of a Silent Meditation
Embracing stillness, with an itchy nose
For as long as I can remember, there’s been a raucous dialogue in my head. Do this. Definitely don’t do that. Is that thing I said okay? Do they like […]
