Life is full of emotional chaos, but bringing it back to focused activities that give joy to your soul can mean the difference between making it or breaking it day to day, year to year. Today, find 10 – 15 minutes to grab a pen and paper (your journal if you keep one) [...]

You know that small voice that tells you to do something and you are afraid if you don’t do what it suggests that you will regret it? At the last minute before I mounted Checkers, the horse, I walked back into the tack room at the Miraval Resort Life in Balance Spa in [...]

Loving Kindness: Sounds great, right? As with so many things, though, the term itself can make the practice feel out of reach when we don’t have a clear understanding of what it means. Of course the best way to understand is by experiencing it directly, but in lieu of that, here are some [...]

When I was a little kid, I used to think that words said in anger were a true reflection of the thoughts and feelings of the monster doing the screaming. The insults stuck with me. It wasn’t until adulthood that I changed that narrative. I learned that sometimes human beings reach a boiling [...]

Exploring the Prayerful Nature of Loving Kindness Meditation Five years ago, I signed up for an 18-month spirituality course, the Kivvun program offered by the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. The course had four main components: 1 Yoga (check—already doing it) 2 Meditation (check—big practice already) 3 Text Study (check, check—love it and been doing it [...]

Finding My Truth In Between Judaism, Buddhism and Life Somewhere around 2012, I realized I had stopped believing in God. I tried to trace it back and it seemed like I lost faith around 2007 or 2008, when my twin girls were in middle school. Before that time, I was consistent about celebrating the Jewish [...]

My mom took her last breath at 3:10 p.m. on February 29, 2016. I whispered the Shema prayer in her ear and urged her to “go with God” before she became still. Although she and my Dad had broken with the traditions of the Jewish religion years before she passed, as she neared the end [...]

“Are you happy?” “As happy as a woman can be, who lost her brother, her mother and her job in the last six months.” That is the answer, right? As happy as a person can be who… (fill in the blank). So given that these things happen, how can we be happy? Everyone has losses, [...]

On the second day of Yom Kippur, I was teaching meditation at a synagogue to a group of hungry and tired middle-aged people. Hungry because it is a day of fasting; tired because they were hungry! It was my first time teaching at the temple, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. I decided to [...]