I’ve been interested in martial arts since I was a child. I took classes here and there, but I never found the courage or confidence to stick with it. The art intimidated me because I couldn’t fully understand it. Years later, in my adult life working with Reiki energy, I was introduced to Qigong, a practice of aligning body, breath,…
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,…
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…
By Traci Pedersen Negative ions are anything but negative when it comes to your health. Recent studies suggest that breathing in air that is abundant in negative ions can have a big influence on your feelings of well-being. So, what are negative ions and how do we gain exposure to them? Ions are atoms or molecules that have gained or…
“Balance” is a word I use every day. Did you know we can achieve balance and the lives we want to live by changing how we think? I recently attended a workshop that helped me learn new ways to achieve balance, especially between my mind and my emotions. I flew to Carefree (yes, that’s a real place!), Arizona, to attend…
Lately, I’ve been feeling a bit like my mom on her 60th birthday when she announced, “No more physical presents! From now on, just give me experiences. I want to see more, hear more, feel more.” So when I discovered an upcoming Tibetan Crystal Bowl concert at a local enlightenment center, it piqued my interest. I decided my mom and…
You most likely know people who claim to have predicted a future event or experienced a connection with a departed loved one. Scientists dislike such claims because they’re impossible to prove—but not for lack of trying. Scores of scientific investigations have been conducted in parapsychology—the study of phenomena such as psychokinesis (using the mind to move objects), telepathy (mind reading),…
According to Mary’s relatives, she’d had a severe water phobia since infancy. She couldn’t take a bath in a full tub of water or go to the beach. The mere sight of water triggered an extremely disturbing feeling in the pit of her stomach. Mary was so phobic that she was even frightened when it rained and suffered water-related nightmares.…
For some people, the words yielding and surrender might evoke romance novels—lovers swept away by passion, tearing each other’s clothes off, transported to an idyll of true-love-forever. Or yielding and surrender can raise the specter of submissive women who are ceaselessly compliant, handmaidens in the backgrounds of men’s lives. But there’s another perspective. Surrendering to a partner, yielding to his…
