Survival Strategy for the Holidays: Meditation
As a therapist and life coach, I hear many times how much people don’t like the holidays, how they find them both stressful and depressing. Below are some how-to’s to start or renew the habit of meditation, which has been shown to reduce both stress and depression.
You may meditate either alone or with one or more friends. Meditating with others is preferable, as when you do that you are actually creating Synergistic Energy Exchange, (a cooperative exchange of energy) and it enhances the meditation experience. But even if you are meditating alone, there are ...
Friends With Benefits: Are They Beneficial? (Part II)
As promised, below is the actual email I sent to my friend with benefits at the end of our time together (minus his real name- I’ll call him “Steve”). I think it is a great stand-alone statement about how friends with benefits can be so much deeper than it seems. I know I am grateful for the experience, personally. Here it is:
Hi Steve,
You didn't do anything wrong. Your not responding to me the other night and how foolish I felt about writing to you and not getting a response really was my issue. I had told you I was going to give you some space, ...
Friends With Benefits: Are They Beneficial? (Part I)
This blog is probably not about what you think it is about. I know, a lot of people out there have judgments about “friends with benefits.” They think it never works out because really we are not “supposed” to be doing that anyway. Sex without love? That’s wrong, how could anything good ever possibly come out of it?...
To Be or Not to Be…Monogamous
Over the past year or so, I have been seriously looking at the idea that perhaps monogamy is not our natural state. In my life, I have rarely been monogamous, even when I had consciously intended to be. And it seems that the world is filled with such stories. Why are the infidelity rates so high? Is it because we are a people with very little integrity, or perhaps because trying to force ourselves into a monogamous mold is against our true nature?
In the animal kingdom, it seems that monogamy is a very rare thing. For example, scientists long touted the heartwarming ...
Animal Totems
Around the beginning of this year, I was lying in bed one night and experienced a very unsettled feeling. It was hard for me at first to put words to it. Then all of a sudden, I got an image of myself as a snake about to shed its skin.
That image was no accident. Several months later, after shedding a number of things in my life-including jobs and relationships- I learned from my Spirit Guides that the snake is my animal totem right now. For those of you who may not know, an animal totem is an essence that walks through life with us, teaching, guiding, and sometimes ...
What’s the Message We’re Sending?
This summer our family welcomed the arrival of an exchange student from Spain. She is sixteen years old and, I imagine, typical in her manner of dress for teens in her country. When she unpacked her suitcase, I realized she was going to basically have to buy a new wardrobe in order to follow the dress code of our small-town American high school.
For instance, most of her shirts were tank tops with spaghetti straps, and most of her shorts, skirts, and dresses barely covered her private parts. I’m not judging her. I’m just stating the facts.
I informed her of ...