SPIRITUALITY
Yang. We all use it. We can’t survive without it. Some of us have more of it than others. But when it is harnessed to serve an evil master, it is the strongest and worst force on earth. You’re listening to funky R&B or Pavarotti soaring and you turn it up and sing your heart out, energized and happy, pumped…
The better you feel, the higher your frequency will be
I didn’t go looking for meditation, not consciously at least. Past imprints on the soul work according to their own rhythms and dictates. I grew up in Hong Kong, and as a senior in high school saw an exhibit of black-and-white photographs by Chris Rainier. As I walked through the gallery, I was mesmerized by the images of yogis and…
Betsy Chasse may like to curse, but that doesn’t mar the clarity of her insights in Tipping Sacred Cows: The Uplifting Story of Spilt Milk and Finding Your Own Spiritual Path in a Hectic World (Atria/Simon & Schuster). It’s her first book, and it’s a doozy: a touching and hilarious account of how Chasse rewired her own life—and a challenge…
Top natural products with a spiritual essence Used for centuries for their healing properties, crystal-infused beauty products are a new way to enhance your skin regimen. If the idea of combining natural products and a sense of the spiritual sounds appealing, these ideas may be calling your name: Crystal massage Similar to acupuncture or cupping, this ritual is amazing for…
By Dr. Howard Samuels September 11, 2001 started out just like any other Tuesday. Men and women all over the country woke up, showered, got dressed, kissed their kids and sent them off to school, and then got into their cars or boarded buses or trains and went off to work—same as any other day—absolutely unaware that everything they knew…
Just as Zen became a buzzword in the ‘90s, mindfulness is traveling a similar route into our 21st-century vernacular. Madison Avenue and social media have discovered that we like our diets, our magazines, our businesses, our relationships, and even our fashion to be mindful. Oversaturation does not mean that mindfulness is a bad thing. It’s accessible, simple (although not always…
Manifesting Moment to Moment You have the power to change the lens with which you view your experience and your reality, and doing so will dramatically affect your potential for creating and manifesting those things that your soul desires. Whatever your personal belief about God, a higher power, or what we refer to in this book as the Universe, we…
I’m losing patience with the “spiritual but not religious” genre of books that’s so popular right now. After a while they all begin to say the same thing, to skim the surface of understanding but never dive in. As Gertrude Stein wrote, “There is no there there.” And so I didn’t expect to like Indie Spiritualist: A No Bullshit Exploration…
Sondra Barrett is a biochemist whom you are as likely to find meditating or performing a qigong movement to drum music as peering into a microscope. For her, the visible and the invisible are not so much reflections of each other as places along a great continuum. Biological cells are more than the basic constituents of life, she says in her…
To beat back the Great Bleakness that is clinical depression takes a lot of falling sick. For the depressive, there is often no choice about sinking into despair—darkness so overpowering that it would shock the uninitiated. For us, it can be a daily occurrence. But to fall sick mindfully, to observe our experience of depression—that skulking trickster, part physical malady…
After months of bitter cold and darkness (especially in the north this year), we think spring will never come. We long to be outside without the constraint of heavy coats and boots, but winter persists. And then one day the new season arrives. Streets and parks are filled with people seeking warmth and light and enjoying the longer days. Our…
Anyone who has suffered from chronic migraines knows the feeling of not being able to think, just wanting to sleep and turn off the pain. For me, the headaches started in high school and continued into my early married years. They were sporadic but intense. I couldn’t tolerate light or noise. Sometimes I missed school and work. Then they were…
Important findings in recent years have deepened our understanding of resilience—the ability to recover quickly from difficult situations—and how important it is for human health. One of the leading organizations in this research is the HeartMath Institute (HMI). Devotees of Rewire Me are well acquainted with HMI. Rollin McCraty, Ph.D., its Director of Research, has been with IHM since…
Meditation doesn’t come easily for many of us. In fact, most people I know find it challenging and give up after a few tries. Because it’s definitely not one-size-fits-all, I’ve often felt that if everyone had access to a variety of different practices we would have a larger community of meditators. For me meditation is getting up at 5:30 in…
Most people probably envision meditation as something done while sitting motionless and in silence. But meditation doesn’t have to be a retreat. You can meditate while walking, doing chores, even during vigorous exercise like running, swimming, or any other athletic pursuit. Meditation Can Help Change the “No Pain, No Gain” Equation Thinking too much while exercising—especially during workouts requiring a…
By Will Donnelly Though it seems a familiar formula for those on a spiritual path to rebuke money and keep things simple (many holy people have taken vows of poverty), I now wonder if it isn’t time for light workers, those doing the most healing work on the planet, to be unafraid to be the next billionaires. It begs the question:…
Review of Julie Ryan’s book At some point, we’ve all wondered, “What happens when we die? Is there life after death, or is death the final chapter?” Death brings up many questions, and psychic medium Julie Ryan has dedicated her life to giving spiritual guidance and helping people understand what happens as we transition from this life into the next.…
Stay open to the present to find love and support Last winter, I learned of the powerful work and messages of Irish mystic, international bestselling author, and spiritual leader Lorna Byrne. I was truly riveted. As a writer, I’ve watched countless videos, webinars, interviews and TED talks with international bestselling authors and thought leaders. But Byrne’s interview was something completely…
Book Review: Exploring the divine in us
Serving tombstone cookies alongside a slice of life
5 ways to affect your soul and find inner peace
Living in flow with the pulse of life
The wisdom of Native Americans hold lessons for us all
New book from Don Miguel Ruiz
Compassion and patience can help pull you out
Let go of your fear, and nourish your soul in faith
From Chris Grosso’s new book “Everything Mind”
Caring for the soul requires spiritually healthy living
Understanding the Spiritual Law of Least Effort
Practical techniques for applying mindfulness to your work life
The more we give with an open heart, the more we will receive
Replenish your spirit
Don Miguel Ruiz is a renowned spiritual teacher and internationally bestselling author of The Four Agreements. In this exclusive interview with Rose Caiola, Don Miguel discusses his new book and gives us the inside scoop behind “The Toltec Art of Life and Death: A Story of Self Discovery.” Rose Caiola Inspired. Rewired. Rewire Me interviews the top health, wellness and spirituality…
Mindfulness meditation lessens stress and boosts the immune function—not a bad start for better health
Everyone does it: from the Burmese and Balinese to the Inuit and Icelanders. In the United States, almost half of us do it, making it one of the most common of our shared rituals. We give thanks for our food with prayer, with rituals and dance, before meals, after eating, and in praise of a bountiful harvest. We thank someone,…
I am sitting in the Good Stuff Diner on West 14th Street across from Nicky Vreeland, a maroon-robed Buddhist monk with deep smile lines. A gifted photographer with an exquisite W Magazine-sponsored exhibit at ABC Carpet & Home to benefit the Tibet Center, Vreeland has mentioned that he finds harmony in his pictures. “Did that train you for life as a monk?” I ask. “I think that…
The British filmmaker Christopher Nolan has followed the conclusion of his Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, with Interstellar, a film that resembles 2001: A Space Odyssey in both its plot and its meaning: Humans get a message from beyond and follow it to deep space, where lies the destiny of the species. Matthew McConaughey is our captain, who leaves his family behind in…
Funny movie about madness and depression
Some students at the Providence Zen Center went to their teacher with a pressing moral dilemma: “Should we kill the roaches in the meditation hall?” If the students didn’t eliminate the roaches, the building might get infested, but killing living beings is a violation of a fundamental Buddhist ethical principle. Ethical behavior—what I think of as integrity-in-action and moral accountability…
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…
As Rose Caiola reported, the first night of Emerging Women Live 2014 was amazing—and as the event continued, it kept getting better and better. The energy of the hundreds of confident, savvy women gathered for the conference turned the Sheraton Times Square into a hub of female power. This convocation of women who are redefining success sends a clear message—the…
By Seth Adam Smith “Both abundance and lack [of abundance] exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend…when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present—love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature, and personal…
Rewire Me is a community committed to helping everyone along their individual path by combining the most useful ancient practices with the latest scientific discoveries. When it comes to navigating those paths, Ram Dass is a trailblazer. He holds a doctorate in psychology from Stanford University, taught at Harvard, where he met and worked with Timothy Leary, wrote the spiritual…
Omega Institute hosts dialogue on changing a world of marginalization and violence to one of love and compassion
For One Artist, Left Is Right
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,…
We’re always looking for new ways to connect with people who share our vision of inspiring others to find their path in life. So when we saw the amazing lineup of speakers coming to New York City’s Javits Center for Hay House’s I Can Do It! weekend, we registered right away. Developed by Louise Hay, the two-day urban wellness retreat features…
By Mallory Bulman and Kaitlin Vogel Many people strive to experience success and inner peace in their lives but don’t know where to start. Sheldon Pizzinat, an author, teacher and spiritual coach, wanted to fill this void, so he organized SoulSpeak, an online conference dedicated to exploring spirituality. Pizzinat tapped luminaries Agapi Stassinopolous, Chris Grosso, Bryan Reeves, Dr. Bernie Siegel,…
The most inscrutable, looming, and painfully urgent question presented by life is what, if anything, might occur at its conclusion. We awaken at birth with no memory of where we came from, twist and wind through the drama of our existence, and eventually exit this stage, receding back into the unknown. If anything, death is a place of no return,…
I just read the most wonderful quote from Pema Chodron’s The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness: Ritual, when it’s heartfelt, is like a time capsule. It’s as if thousands of years ago somebody had a clear, unobstructed view of magic, power, and sacredness, and realized that if he went out each morning and greeted the sun…
The subtitle of Lama Marut’s new book, Be Nobody(Beyond Words), encapsulates the quandary of its contents: “We’re all desperately trying to be somebody. Maybe we’ve got it all wrong.” Being a “nobody” would seem to be a mark of failure rather than a goal in our overachieving and hyper-busy world. Why would we want to dismantle this self we take…
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…
By Anneli Rufus In a recent study, people were asked to choose between winning a small prize immediately and larger prizes they would have to wait several weeks to claim. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 70 percent chose the smaller-sooner prize. But follow-up questioning revealed that those who chose to wait treasured their rewards more highly than those who claimed their prize immediately—even…
By Damon Orion Michael Franti’s music is inseparable from his work as an activist, humanitarian, and spiritual being. For the past two decades, the energetic six-foot, six-inch performer has used his platform as singer-songwriter for the hip-hop/funk/rock band Spearhead to spread positivity, raise environmental and political awareness, and alleviate human suffering through charities like Soles4Souls and his own recently established…
Summer is synonymous with love, romance, and joy. We celebrate the abundance of Mother Earth. This is a time to reach high and aim high. The summer solstice is a celebration of the longest day of the year and marks the height of the waxing season: a time of fertility of nature. Think of this as a time of being…
Brent Baum is an important person in my life and a remarkable man. He’s a therapist and a teacher who developed Holographic Memory Resolution (HMR), a method combining meditation, exercise, and emotional reframing techniques to ease the impact of stress and trauma. He defines trauma as “any experience large or small that overwhelms us in our daily existence.” Left unresolved,…
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…
The value of mindfulness for promoting compassion for others and ourselves has drawn a lot of attention in recent years. And few have done more to help people bring self-compassion into their lives than Christopher Germer, Ph.D. A founding member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, Dr. Germer has led countless mindfulness workshops and is the author of one…
An acclaimed yoga teacher and leader of kirtan, or call-and-response devotional chanting, Snatam Kaur sings with the intent of uplifting, healing, and transforming her listeners. A longtime social activist, the California-born vocalist often performs in prisons, hospices, and schools in low-income communities. Kaur’s music “is just pure spirit,” says fan Oprah Winfrey. “There’s no part of it that doesn’t feel…
Dr. Joe Dispenza’s newest book—You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter—is being published by Hay House today! As many Rewire Me readers (and all of my friends) know, Dr. Joe has had a tremendous influence on my life and was one of the reasons I founded Rewire Me in the first place. You Are the Placebo is his best…
It was the fifth time that George Mason University hosted the conference on “Leading to Well-Being” but my first visit, and I’m so glad I attended! The goal of the conference is to explore “the innovative intersections of leadership and well-being” and it far surpassed my expectations. This year’s theme was Thriving Together “to inspire human flourishing throughout the world…
Adyashanti is a fascinating man, and his new book Resurrecting Jesus: Embodying the Spirit of a Revolutionary Mystic (Sounds True) is equally fascinating. There’s an appealing pluralism to both the man and the book. Although he didn’t have a particularly religious upbringing, Adyashanti’s connection to the Jesus story began during his childhood, when he was still Steven Gray, living in…
By Steve Lewis The soundtrack to my road trip fantasy always begins with the Allman Brothers’ “Ramblin’ Man.” In my imagination, the camera pans down to a glistening Winnebago cresting a hill on a clear blue July morning, everyone in my big family laughing, free as the clichéd wind as we sluice down narrow lanes and merge onto interstates crisscrossing…
When Unconditional Love Is Conditional
By Eve Hogan I was once working with a group of teenagers discussing “integrity agreements,” which I described as “either spoken or unspoken agreements not to hurt each other.” These integrity agreements are the fabric of our society. This belief, that we won’t harm each other, is what allows us to walk down the street without worrying about getting shot…
Now in his seventies, Robert Trivers is no longer a prodigy but still acts the enfant terrible. He taught himself calculus when he was 14 and wrote and published a series of papers that revolutionized evolutionary theory when he was still a graduate student at Harvard. He was awarded the Crafoord Prize in Biosciences by the Royal Swedish Academy of…
When Shan Mussulman’s mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer in May 2012, he held the vision of her as being healthy and cancer-free. It wasn’t easy. None of her doctors believed the disease could be cured and neither did she, but four months after Shan started her on a comprehensive health strategy, the cancer was gone. Shan is now dedicated…
I’ve been an admirer of Roger Housden’s writing, especially Ten Poems to Change Your Life, for some time, and his new book, Keeping the Faith Without a Religion (Sounds True), did not disappoint. A slim volume at less than 150 pages, its length belies its depth. Housden’s erudition, sincerity, remarkable understanding of literature, and sometimes-unexpected yet always-apt associations between saints…
I had the opportunity to speak with the remarkable Gayathri Ramprasad, whose memoir Shadows in the Sun: Healing from Depression and Finding the Light Within (Hazelden)—called a “a cross-cultural lens to mental illness”—was recently published. Her harrowing experiences with depression, the social stigma depression sufferers endure, and her courage in helping herself and others bring a new perspective to an…
Gayathri Ramprasad’s memoir Shadows in the Sun: Healing from Depression and Finding the Light Within (Hazelden) is “a cross-cultural lens to mental illness” tracing her lifelong battle with depression to her realization of “the light within”—a spiritual and emotional awakening which set her onto the path of healing. Here she shares the steps she took to heal from depression. Healing from Depression…
I recently attended Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation, an intensive three-day retreat with a panel of brilliant experts that included scientists, philosophers, and Buddhist thinkers. The conference was held at Upaya Zen Center, nestled in a quiet valley surrounded by mountains in the heart of Santa Fe. Upaya, founded on a vision of Buddhism, is based on the…
Those of you who aren’t familiar with Betsy Chasse are in for a treat. I had a chance to speak with her recently, and she was just as funny and freewheeling as I expected. Where do I start with this dynamic woman who’s gone from child actress to gourmet dog-treat entrepreneur to filmmaker to seeker, finder, and author?! Let’s start…
Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, was named Piyush by his Indian immigrant parents and raised as a Hindu. His conversion to Christianity, he told an interviewer from Christianity Today, took seven years. It began when his grandfather died and he turned to books for insights into the mysteries of life and death—first the Bible, then the writings of…
Shorter and narrower in focus than The Art of Flourishing, and written more for his professional peers, perhaps, than prospective patients, Jeffrey Rubin’s Meditative Psychotherapy: The Marriage of East and West, available as an e-book from Amazon, is nevertheless required reading for anyone pursuing transformation and growth, whether spiritual, emotional, or both. Though Buddhism and psychoanalysis foster mindfulness and personal transformation,…
If you’re a regular visitor to Rewire Me, you know that I’m really drawn to the work of Dr. Joe Loizzo. He is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and Columbia-trained Buddhist scholar, as well as the founder and director of the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science. He teaches Clinical Psychiatry in Integrative Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, and is currently an adjunct…
If you’re a regular visitor to Rewire Me, you know that I’m really drawn to the work of Dr. Joe Loizzo. He is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and Columbia-trained Buddhist scholar, as well as the founder and director of the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science. He teaches Clinical Psychiatry in Integrative Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, and is currently an adjunct…
Gabrielle Bernstein wasn’t always a social media darling with an international following. Before she was featured on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday as a next generation thought leader, before the New York Times described her as a “guru” for young women, before her video blog made the top of YouTube’s Next Video Bloggers list, and before Forbes named her one of…
Dr. Jeffrey Rubin combines the tools of psychoanalysis, Buddhism, and yoga in his therapeutic practice. The ideal he fosters, for his patients, his readers, and himself, is mastery of the “art of flourishing”—a mode of being in which we are “engaging our life wholeheartedly and thriving; living well and completely; leading a meaningful and rewarding life.” This isn’t transcendental bliss…
I’m really drawn to the work of Dr. Joe Loizzo. He is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and Columbia-trained Buddhist scholar, as well as the founder and director of the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science. He teaches Clinical Psychiatry in Integrative Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, and is currently an adjunct Assistant Professor of Religion at the Columbia Center for Buddhist Studies.…
I just finished rereading A Heart Full of Peace, a wonderful book on Buddhism and the spiritual life written by Joseph Goldstein, one of the premier meditation teachers in the United States. Goldstein, along with Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg, was instrumental in bringing classical Buddhism from the East to the West in the last several decades of the twentieth…
Yoga is everywhere—in corporations, health clubs, and elementary schools. And yet, it is not an exaggeration to say that there’s very little real yoga in today’s yoga-mad world. When tall, lithe women posed like contortionists grace the covers of glossy magazines and TV commercials, it is natural to assume, as most people do, that yoga means performing a physical movement…
