What Have You Been Learning Lately?

A couple of weeks ago, this was my Free Will Astrology horoscope: "Live out of your imagination, not your history," says Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. While that's always true, it will be especially crucial for you to remember in 2012. This is the year you can transcend stale traditions -- a time when you can escape your outworn habits, reprogram your conditioned responses, and dissolve old karma. You will be getting unparalleled opportunities to render the past irrelevant. And the key to unlocking all the magic will be your freewheeling yet highly disciplined imagination. Call on it often to show you the way toward the future. Say what you will about astrology, but you have to admit that this is some wise advice. I was on a date recently with a fella who, like everyone else, has some baggage . As he described the current complications in his life, I couldn't help but think about the history we carry into new relatio...

By and large, our lives are shaped by the things we do over and over, day in day out, tires circling through well-worn grooves. These are the routines and habits that lend form to days and weeks and years, and give the world illusory order. As long as everything remains the same, we know what to do. There is safety and comfort in the repetition. My life is filled with these little routines. I have a specific order in which I get ready for bed that's remained basically unchanged for several years. Lately I've been watching my repetition and considering what these habits are creating in my life. Small, daily choices can add up over time to become so much more important than each of the individual choices along the way. One cigarette won't kill you, but thousands over a period of years will. So will years of poor daily dietary choices and the no exercise habit. Conversely, there are all kinds of wonderful little routine gifts we can give ourselves to create a positive futu...

About a month ago I hit a majorly delayed adult milestone that I (only half jokingly) always swore I would never hit: I finally got my driver license. I learned to drive at the typical age and would occasionally renew my permit to contribute to road trip driving but never followed through and got the license. My quip for years was, "I don't drive, honey, I'm driven," and that was cute until it suddenly wasn't anymore. Suddenly I woke up and realized that I was reaching into the end of my 20's and really needed to get my shit together. I mean, come on! Besides native New Yorkers, who gets to be my age and doesn't have their license? Not being licensed was a clever way to limit my options and the size of my life for a long time. It disqualified me from taking good, challenging jobs, traveling to exciting places outside the reach of public transit and otherwise participating in typical adult life. I used to have a reoccurring anxiety dream that I would need...

91 years old. That's what's up. There's a great conversation going in the yoga blogs about the commercialization/sexualization of yoga and the commodification of women's bodies in the process. A regular complaint in the blogs and their comment sections is the lack of diverse images of yogis, particularly in advertising for yoga products. The predominant image of yogis being fit, bendy, young white women has been accused of scaring away people that might benefit enormously from the practice. Being a rabid yoga evangelist, I can't tell you how many times I've been told by someone that they're not "young/thin/flexible enough" to do yoga...and you can't blame them for believing that when the images they are exposed to show them physical forms that they don't apparently resemble in poses that seem laughably impossible. Today I came across an article about a nonagenarian named Bernice who is being touted as the "world's oldest yo...

When I started so purkh -ing over a year ago, I did it with the intention of blessing and elevating my dad and brother, and resolving any lingering emotion in relationships past. The prayer can be applied for the purpose of calling in one's Beloved, but all I really needed at the time was a clean break. I wasn't in the market for a lifelong partner. Similarly, when I set up my online dating profile I was still not looking for a mate. I just wanted to date in a normal, Hollywood movie way and get a better understanding of dudes. It's been a real mixed bag of an experiment. One guy got so upset when I wasn't comfortable coming over to his house after the first date ("I thought I did a good job proving that I'm not crazy." Ahem.) that he determined that we could never be together. Another fella smiled and flirted and smiled, sent me links to his music and never called again. And then there was the guy in rainbow cheetah print leggings. We won't get into...

No way. Absolutely not. There is a particularly searing Dear Sugar letter response with a quote that I love which has been resonating lately: "Limits are not punishments, but rather lucid and respectful expressions of our needs and desires and capabilities." Everyone has natural limits to what they are able to offer one another. They don't always express them in a lucid, respectful fashion, but when you meet someone's limit, you know it. When we have a need and it falls outside of a person's limitations, it can be really upsetting and we often take this personally as a rejection or criticism. I had a conversation with a dear friend today about this and framed it this way: Say you really want me to tightrope walk. I don't know how and am afraid of falling so am unwilling to try. As much as you may need or want me to perform this daring-do, it falls outside of my limitations and it has nothing to do with you or your value. Let's apply this same ide...

The Lady with the Lamp Florence Nightingale's name has been badly maligned in order to describe caregivers who form emotional attachments to their patients. FloNi was no sap, though. She was a strong, courageous woman who flouted the wishes of her family and the conventions of society in order to pursue her passion. She gained the nickname "The Lady with the Lamp" from a quote in a report on her work in the Crimean War: "She is a ‘ministering angel’ without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds." The bright lights stand out in stark contrast to the darkness around them and attract an enormous amount of ...