My news and Facebook feeds are full of stories about how Eastern inspired techniques like Meditation, Yoga and/or Tai Chi can ease life’s stresses. While this is useful information, I can recall one point in my overscheduled life when I felt my stress level increase as I drove through rush hour traffic to get to my yoga class on time. Alone in my car, with my hands gripping the steering wheel, cursing out wayward drivers, I started to laugh at…
For months the refrain of ANTICIPATION from the Carly Simon song released in November 1971 has been running through my mind. That song and its lyrics were so apt for the soon to be high school graduate who had her mind set on exploring her life outside of her family and working in London for a year. Yesterday, I googled the lyrics to see if the rest of the song had relevance to my life some 44 years later. My…
Spring arrived in April this year. Virginia’s spring is usually a bit earlier than the spring of PA and NJ where I spent much of my life. I relish and welcome the spring flowers as they brighten the transition from cold to warm days. The sunny smiling daffodils, the billowing white and pink weeping cherry trees and the soon to bloom brightly colored tulips all bring a smile to my face. Their visit is all too brief. Ralph Waldo Emerson…
I recently read an article by Bonnie L. Grant entitled “Antidepressant Microbes in Soil: How dirt makes you happy”. My mind was instantly flooded with my own gardening memories. My first garden was an act of love taught to me by my Dad. He missed his bounty from the family farm he knew as a boy in Lancaster County, PA. So he tilled a plot of land at my grandmother’s in Springfield, PA. We soon had a wonderful bounty of…
As mentioned in previous posts, my obsession with lavender stems from my father’s influence when he asked me to use the word to calm him from worrying about places where I ended up as a result of my global business travel. The word caught on and it became a word that all family members began to use if needless worrying was filling our behavior or thoughts. As I recommitted to studying yoga and after completing a phenomenal 200 hour Integrative…