August 2008

Every week we highlight the best articles, blogs, news, videos and interesting Web tidbits to help you live green, be healthy, and connect with your sense of spirituality. Read our roundup for info that just helps you live better.

Don’t Miss Your Bliss

I’m back from a vacation in Egypt — with new energy and inspiration. Now that I’m back at the gym, thinking about the challenges workers faced to build those magnificent monuments brings to mind one of my favorite mantras, “I can” … and how this simple statement can motivate you to try new things, like the hot workout buzz that was all around me when I returned from my trip: kettle bells!

Every week we highlight the best articles, blogs, news, videos and interesting Web tidbits to help you live green, be healthy, and connect with your sense of spirituality. Read our roundup for info that just helps you live better.

Winners of the Environmental Photographer of the Year 2008 Awards

You’d think that living in a place like Boulder, Colorado, I’d be well grounded in the art of contemplation, what with all the practitioners of Buddhist meditation and advanced yoga who are my neighbors.  But as a mother of two busy children, and a wife, and a writer and academic juggling a full-time mix of part-time writing and teaching work, I’m lucky if I can find time to walk my dog by noon, let alone savor the meadowlark’s song as the sun crests the pasture east of my house, while I sit reverently with a cup of fresh-ground morning coffee. 

“Mamma Mia!”  — what a movie! Exhilarating, dazzling, breathtakingly beautiful for your eyes, rockingly wonderful for your ears, and energetically enchanting for your heart, “Mamma Mia” is pure, unadulterated fun.

Based on the smash Broadway hit, “Mamma Mia” revives the old-fashioned movie musical with such a flourish that I kept thinking—where have you BEEN, musicals? Welcome back!

Every week we highlight the best articles, blogs, news, videos and interesting Web tidbits to help you live green, be healthy, and connect with your sense of spirituality. Read our roundup for info that just helps you live better.

Save 20-75% off at the Gaiam.com 6th Annual Sale

Our body heals through movement. It is a bold statement to print without backing it with references to studies, which would rather be my style and desire, but then there is something to say about the innate intuition of something that feels right (and of course there are tons of studies done).

From the ages 46 to 51, there have been some apocalyptic changes in my body. My hair is graying and receding; my arm is not quite long enough to read fine print; and my pants are not as loose… Yoga is definitely helping slow this inevitable aging process and I’m happy to say that it is a practice that will be taking me (and Colleen) all the way to the last breath.

Most people look to a vacation as an opportunity to relax, a respite from the speed, demands and familiarity of our daily lives.  Yet often, especially if we’re traveling to big cities or a broad destination such as Europe or Alaska, we end up driving too many miles, cramming our days too full, and ticking off a too-long checklist of “must sees.”  We come home needing a vacation from our vacation, struggling with a disconcerting feeling that we only glossed the surface of what we hoped to discover during our time away.

Kathlyn and I are just back from a meeting in the mountains of Colorado with the Transformational Leadership Council. TLC was founded by a group of us, meeting in Jack Canfield’s living room about 5 years ago. Now, it’s grown to 100+ people, necessitating a move to larger quarters (Jack’s living room is big, but it’s not that big!) We meet now about twice a year, to hear what everybody’s doing and to help move the field of personal and relationship transformation forward. One of our new members, Marianne Williamson, gave a rousing talk based on her new book, The Age Of Miracles. Her talk touched on something dear to my heart, the incredible explosion of creativity that can come forth at mid-life.  I gave the opening invocation, which I will quote from to give you a taste of the expanded yet playful spirit of the event: