By Jennie Dorris At first glance, a session of shira yoga might look like a typical yoga class. But hang around to listen, and you’ll notice that, instead of traditional kirtan music or a flowing electronic groove, the room is humming with an ancient Hebrew chant. Currently available in New York and Boston, and launching later this year in San…
Carmelo Blandino explains why and how he rewired his brain to paint with his less dominant left hand
In the summer of 1969, with a getaway weekend at an acquaintance’s cottage on the Connecticut shore stymied by steady rain, I moped around alone in the rented space, bored stiff. Riffling through some record albums in the cluttered den, I came upon an LP that was beguiling in its starkness: bordered in black, the cover consisted of a single,…
Watching and being watched are no longer confined to how newborns bond with their mothers or apprentice chefs learn from sushi masters. Watching now changes how we identify ourselves and how others understand us. “Selfies” are not an anomaly; they are personal reflections of a wholesale adoption of the new culture of watching. We are watching so many—and so many…
I go back about 35 years in the do-good PR and communications field and have spent much of the last decade working to build awareness of specific ways contemplative practice can facilitate deep social and environmental change. So I’m heartened by the surge of mainstream media coverage of mindfulness in the past year or so—and at the same time concerned…
When Bob Dylan turns another year older on May 24, the usual gaggle of journalists and Dylanophiles will report the news with the same sense of head-scratching, how-can-it-be wonderment they’ve expressed on Dylan’s birthday ever since America’s rock ’n’ roll poet laureate hit middle age. It’s as if, as a nation of nostalgia hounds, we simply can’t get our minds…
Esalen, a storied getaway perched above the thundering waves of the central California coast, was the setting for the second annual Esalen Inspirational Film Festival. While the resort itself is a powerful motivator for self-reflection and renewal, the festival played its part with a week of memorable images, skilled storytelling, and constant reminders that human beings are remarkably resilient. Woven…
In my childhood, I spent many afternoons at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. My father loved the exhibition pavilions there, and to keep me occupied and not bored when I was too small to understand intellectually what I was viewing, my parents gave me a sketchpad and crayons or colored pencils and I would sit and draw. At…
