What Have You Been Learning Lately?

Obviously... A couple of weeks ago,  Magic Mike  some how came up over drinks with my token, straight guy friends. I explained two things: 1) That sorry excuse for a movie pandered far more to the fulfillment of male fantasies than women's. It's a movie about men getting what they want, written and directed by men. 2) When you're raised into adulthood in the gay community in San Francisco, über attractive, muscular, naked guys are a dime a dozen. ...but countless women (and gay men ) loved it! And that's fine. Maybe I'm a grumpy feminist with no interest in a film based loosely on Channing Tatum's time as a teenage stripper in Tampa. Maybe I've just seen too many perfectly chiseled bare derrieres in person to be moved by seeing them on screen. There's no lack of appreciation for the male form here. Men's bodies possess a strength, grace and power that I adore. The sentiment underlying this is: "You're hot. So what? What else do yo

"You surrender to a lot of things which are not worthy of you. I wish you would surrender to your radiance...your integrity...your beautiful human grace." -Yogi Bhajan Being in the healing business makes one the recipient of a lot of stories and secrets. They vary in tone and content from heartbreaking to heartwarming, triumphant to shame-filled, sacred to irreverent. My favorite stories are those of the healing journey, hearing about and sometimes having the privilege to watch people transforming. I had the joy of bearing witness in such a manner recently, after Donna Quesada 's ever gorgeous class at Yoga West . An older gentleman approached me to ask some questions about my practice and tell me his story of a decades long battle with alcoholism. He had been in and out of many types of programs over the years, but shared, with tears in his eyes, that after three days in yoga he had finally found something that made him feel different , that he felt would actually he

Spoiler alert! This won't end well. Baz Luhrmann ruined my love life. Or rather, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet did. This fabulously flashy spectacle came out when I was a very impressionable adolescent with a preexisting drama condition. I had already read the play and loved the story, but dreamy LeoDiCap and sweet, lovely Claire Danes sealed the deal: If it's not tragic, intense and consuming, it's not real love. (Don't even get me started on  Titanic ...) We harbor all kinds of ideas about love and life from stories but none of these are derived more powerfully or importantly than from the way we were raised and our experiences along the way. The way we are loved and the quality of love we witness as we grow up teach what to view and accept as love. This writes our story of love and informs our ability to live openhearted, be intimate, and desire and maintain healthy relationships. What's your Love Story? Is it a tragedy? Is it a drama? Is it fraug

http://shop.soworthloving.com/ "I approve. I approve. You can do what you do. I approve of you."  -Charlie Getter Sometimes I accuse myself of being lazy. Then I find myself deep into a project, without thought of eating or sleeping, and I realize that there's a difference between being lazy and being unmotivated. When it comes to the things that inspire my passionate focus, I am a tireless, dedicated perfectionist. My standards are exacting and occasionally unrealistic. There's some control neurosis wrapped up in that, but it's moreso due to a desire to make the world a perfectly, ideally beautiful place. Why settle for anything that's not exactly right? Work until your fingers bleed, until you fall over out of sheer exhaustion. There's nowhere that these rigorous requirements are enforced more stringently than inside my own head and heart. For someone who works helping people to breathe, heal and feel good, I am not especially nice to myself