I love summer! I don’t have to wear a bulky coat, days are longer, and there’s more time to enjoy things I love like bonfires on the beach. It’s a perfect opportunity to slow down and enjoy what’s around us and recharge our batteries! Here are some of the ways I rewire myself during the summer. Don’t work so hard,…
Ben Watts and Tiina Dohrmann met in an independent dance production in 1991. They are the founders of Greenspan Center, a water-based wellness center in one of the few remaining loft buildings in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, where they practice many body therapies, including Zero Balancing, WaterDance, and Watsu, a Shiatsu-based treatment that takes place in their ground-floor pool. Ben and…
By Anneli Rufus A total stranger about whose business establishment I had written an article emailed me the night after it was published, alleging that my article was “mostly erroneous.” For a horrified split-second I wondered how this could be, as (1) I’m a conscientious professional—not perfect, sure, but too careful after having written thousands of articles to get one…
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…
Balancing spirituality and science, the lineup for last week’s FACES conference in Washington, D.C., was remarkable: Roshi Joan Halifax, Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Kristin Neff, Barbara Fredrickson, Frank Ostaseski, Christine Courtois, Tara Brach, John Briere, and Chris Germer. I was worried that mindfulness had been talked about a bit too much of late, but the speakers brought fresh insights and research to…
By day, I’m a calm, mild-mannered middle school teacher who would do just about anything to motivate my students to do their best work and fall in love with learning. I praise their achievements and efforts, not just their high scores, and then watch those scores improve. When they stumble, I help them see how to pick themselves back up…
I turned 63 this year. How can this be? In my mind, I’m perpetually 30. When I was 30, my innocent look and ageless skin meant I’d still get carded. I was living like a free spirit—taking weird jobs…standing buck naked in the middle of a room full of clothed people. Really. My joke to myself was that every morning…
Once upon a time, when stationery was pastel and melon-scented, I closed all my correspondence with “love.” An unexpectedly fastidious gene prevented me from making the transition to “Luv ya!” a few years later—a failure that pretty much describes my entire middle school experience, socially if not academically. My pre-Internet-age education did ensure that I’d graduate knowing the proper way…
Like so many people, women in particular, I was never very comfortable in my own skin. But my discomfort had less to do with wanting to be a blonde instead of a brunette or wishing for blue eyes instead of hazel. Though I did of course occasionally covet different physical traits than the ones I was born with, it wasn’t…
