I recently attended Omega NYC’s “The Neuroscience of Well-Being, Mindfulness & Love” workshop at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. It was led by Jack Kornfield, Ph.D., and Dan Siegel, M.D.—two people I’d wanted to hear in person for years. Kornfield’s Seeking the Heart of Wisdom, which he wrote with Joseph Goldstein, was one of the first books about…
As I prepare for the coming school year, I’m planning lessons and looking forward to seeing new faces in my classroom. But something that happened over the summer is also on my mind. Our nation’s bifurcated reaction to the tragedy of Trayvon Martin’s death and George Zimmerman’s subsequent acquittal cries out for each of us to rethink race, youth, guns,…
I grew up in a house where Friday nights consisted of Dad drunk on the floor shouting, “I love you, Diane!” My mother’s name is Gail. His consistent abuse of me, both verbally and physically, left me in a state of depression. As a child, I was filled with despair and hopelessness. At school, my mind kept wandering off into…
Last week I wrote about starting Zen’tinis, a conversational salon. Maybe, like me, you’ve been to enough cocktail parties, networking events, and informal hangouts and you long for the substance of real stimulation. You wish you could have it in an environment where you can learn the thoughts of the folks around you and share one or two of your own.…
A few years ago, something struck me: our culture simply doesn’t offer many situations that are designed to support us in authentic dialogue. Most of the time, adults interact in ways that are either accidental or transactional. Cocktail parties are about transaction according to attractiveness; business-networking events are all about the elevator pitch. We rarely walk into those kinds of…
