If I offered you vanilla or chocolate ice cream, which would you choose? Would you prefer one over the other? And if you chose vanilla and I would give you chocolate instead, would you be upset? These seem trivial questions, and you may wonder what...
Two months ago today, my immensely loved mom passed away. She had received the diagnosis of terminal cancer only 4 months prior. During these past 6 months I have experienced the most intense and difficult moments of my life, and some of the most beautiful...
I've been dealing with a serious health challenge in my family for the last couple of months, which has me traveling back and forth across the Atlantic. This is why I haven't written in a while, as other things seem more important at the moment....
- Guest Blog by Evangelos Diavolitsis - Insight of the day. Stillness is the best google search! I discovered this afternoon that a still mind is much more educational and illuminating than any google search. What do I mean by this? When my thinking mind is still, I notice I...
I never really understood the practice of Loving Kindness, metta, until recently. Sure, I had read about it, heard about it in my trainings, practiced it, and even taught it, but somehow I didn’t ‘quite get it’. That is until I read Christina Feldman’s book...
The teachings of the Buddha about the Second Arrow are a great way to understand why holding on to a grudge causes so much more suffering than the actual event that caused the grief. Two Buddhist monks are silently walking along a path. When they reach...
When Paula had just passed away I didn’t feel anything. I had seen this moment coming for quite a while. We had exchanged our last text messages saying how much we loved each other. My husband and I went for a walk on the beach...
I’ve wanted a kitten for a long time. Or two, actually. But because my husband and I were always traveling, it never seemed like a good idea. Enter the pandemic. We suddenly found ourselves home all the time. And it doesn’t look like we are...
You should eat breakfast; it’s the most important meal of the day. However, you should also not eat breakfast because intermittent fasting is really good for you. You shouldn’t eat carbohydrates, and lots of fat. And also: you shouldn’t eat fat because it’s not good for your...
Suffering is a loaded term. In Buddhism suffering – or rather: how not to suffer – is the crux of the practice. Many people associate suffering with physical pain, with the lack of a place to live, or with starvation, and therefore think that they...