Breathing fast and slow

It's right about this point every new semester that I begin to drag a bit. I'm an associate professor at a local community college where we have completed week number five, and I'm tired. At home, my youngest daughter, my husband and I have just about adapted to not only my new school schedule but my daughter's, which of course is completely different from mine. And while summer only officially ended yesterday, in Southern California we're accustomed to having our warmest weather throughout the fall. We live close enough to the beach to occasionally make a mad dash for the sand after school and before the dinner hour. Naturally, we have to squeeze in two afternoons of soccer practice, a game on the weekend and an extra game or two where I help out as an assistant referee. Luckily, the after-school clubs at my daughter's school do not begin for another two weeks. I haven't even mentioned my daughter's homework, the lessons I routinely prepare, the student...

"Here is your new common sense: Less Thinking + More Listening = More Knowing." According to Master Teacher and accomplished yoga practitioner Erich Schiffmann, this is our equation for abundant awareness. It's the new math in very old clothing. Or, maybe it's the old math in the age of the Internet because, in addition to this equation, Erich gave us the following mantra, which he practiced with us by repeating many times throughout his lecture, "Be online all the time." Only a Master Teacher can make the Internet sublime. And what sort of sacred counsel has Erich embedded in this technologically inspired mantra? It happens to be the oldest story there is, and, according to Erich, at this time in history we happen to be waking up to it more and more. And, yes, of course, love does enter into it; however, Erich's instruction to "be online all the time," was intended to encourage us to be more infinite. His counsel was a reminder to us that Con...

One of the most difficult experiences we will go through in life is the experience of confronting grief, which only occasionally is a close second to the experience of raising teenagers. In either case, there is no remote with a fast-forward button or a clever app for escaping it. Grief is an in-your-face proposition, and while there are many ways to circumvent grief, there is only one way through it. I was reminded of this last night when I joined close to 200 other intrepid souls who gathered together to collectively grieve the loss of a mutual friend. I know that out in Joshua Tree, the fourth annual celebration of Bhakti Fest is blissfully underway, and I am not there. Earlier this year, a friend and I made tentative plans to drive out to the desert together to participate in one of the festival's four days. We were going to saturate our ears and our auras with kirtan. The Fates, however, took a pencil to our calendar and offered us not only alternate plans, but a different t...

"Somebody's being born right now; somebody's dying right now; somebody's laughing right now; somebody's crying right now." This is a thread from one of the countless conversations my daughter and her friends shared together on the sand, under the sun at the beach Friday. I was there, too, at the beach, on the sand, with a circle of my own friends. We were the parents, so we kept to the perimeter where we shared other conversation, taking turns being vigilant and staying out of the way. When a friend called yesterday to tell me that her husband--also a good friend--had only hours before ended his life, I thought of my daughter and the children of my friends innocently sending these proclamations about life into the wind and out across the ocean the day before. Here now was the truth of them, rolling back in with the tide, and crashing down upon our lives. It makes no sense to ask "why," even though I spent the better part of yesterday on the phone...