C Malambo/peopleimages.com/Adobe Stock When we lengthen the exhale, we’re better able to find our power and invite a sense of relaxation to high intensity movement. Longer exhales cause the vagus nerve to send a signal to your brain, activating the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest) and easing the sympathetic nervous system (fight, flight, or freeze). The technique I share below is one that I practice when engaging in strenuous physical activity and training. This practice has been instrumental in helping me find my flow. With a l...

Share Director Kogonada’s 2017 feature film debut Columbus was a quiet marvel that deftly balanced melancholy and wonder, inviting viewers to still ourselves and move slowly through the everyday with a sort of reverent and careful consideration we rarely allow. Follow-up After Yang moves with the same subtle rhythms. The setting might be futuristic and its genre far more akin to science fiction than its predecessor, but this breathtaking exploration of what makes a human aches with the same subtly seismic shifts that have become Kogonada’s trad...

Share “Out yonder there is a huge world, which exists independent of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckons like a liberation.”--Albert Einstein, physicist We are living in the Space Age. It began on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik 1. The first human orbited the Earth on April 12, 1961. The first person set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969. A new era of space flight...

Share Niṣf Sha’ban (Mid-Sha’ban) falls between the 14th and 15th of Sha’ban, the eighth month in the Islamic calendar. The event is also known as Shab e-Barat, Bara’a Night, the Night of Records, or the Night of Fortune and Forgiveness. Associated with God’s decrees for the coming year, the night is thought to be a time when Allah is especially merciful. Muslims all over the world celebrate Mid-Sha’ban with special prayers, Qur’an recitation, staying awake during the night for prayer, praying for loved ones, giving charity, fasting, and other a...

Share In 1847, Dred Scott — an enslaved person whose master had died — filed a lawsuit stating that because they lived in a free territory, he and his wife Harriet should be free. With moral and financial support from friends, the Scotts suffered through ten years of many reversals in state and circuit courts. Finally, on March 6, 1857, Dred Scott v. Sandford made it to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the Court was stacked against the case: Seven of the Justices had been appointed by pro-slavery presidents. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delive...

Share Jean-Pierre de Caussade (born 1675) was a French Jesuit who died on this day in 1751. He was appointed spiritual director of a community of nuns and decided to share with them his ideas on the spiritual life. The material was published a century after his death as Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence. The book has become a Christian devotional classic. De Caussade gives us a rich and imaginative appreciation for the many ways that God speaks to us and others in the present moment. He also has a strong sense of everyday spirituality; in o...

Share The Jewish festival of Purim begins at sundown. It celebrates community life and specifically the deliverance of the Jews from a plot by the tyrant Haman to annihilate the Jews. The story, which is read at this time, is reported in the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible. Listeners whirl noisemakers every time they hear Haman's name in the story. Other activities include feasting, giving food (especially three-cornered cookies), making charitable contributions, and wearing masks and costumes. For a more extensive explanation, visit RitualW...

Share The time to practice is as close as possible to the actual moment of the upset…. 1. Focus or sink in To focus means to become physically aware of what’s going on as sensation in your body…. Whether it’s physical pain or an emotion such as fear or anger, it will be expressed in the form of sensation. Pay attention to that. Is your chest tight? Breathing shallow or forced? Is your heart pounding? Don’t try to change anything. Just stay present…. Do not – repeat: do not – use this occasion to analyze or justify yourself…. Taking time with th...

Share “We are fragile creatures surrounded by hostile facts,” states Murray (Don Cheadle), who teaches popular culture at the College on the Hill in a small midwestern town. He shows his students things like the history of the movie car crash and believes Elvis Presley should be an academic field. Two of the fragile creatures in his life are Jack (Adam Driver), his best friend and a pioneering professor of “Hitler Studies” at the college, and Jack’s wife Babette (Greta Gerwig), who teaches life skills to the elderly and infirm. They have four c...

Share This brave documentary focuses on the life and musical career of Sinead O’Connor who was born Dublin, Ireland. She had a turbulent relationship with her mother and then endured beatings by nuns when she was sent to a Roman Catholic Magdalene home. She later characterized the place as “a nest of Devils that’s run by people with no respect for God or children or the rest of us.” Despite being exploited by authoritarian teachers, this gifted singer and songwriter created a name for herself when she was only in her twenties. O’Connor refused ...

The Daily Meditation with Paul Harrison Cyclic Sighing Breathing Technique For Stress / Anxiety / 10:17 Today, I’m going to discuss cyclic sighing breathing techbique, which you can use to reduce anxiety and to reduce stress. Now, it is a breathing technique. And you might wonder why breathing techniques are so powerful. Well, recently, Stanford University released research that revealed lots about why breathing techniques help us so much when it comes to alleviating the symptoms of stress and anxiety. Essentially, if you think about what happe...

Share “At Ruby and Hart’s funeral, our rabbi, Sharon, quoted a story from the Talmud, a collection of rabbinic discussions of Jewish law and theology. In the story, Rabbi Akiva is in a terrible shipwreck but survives. His friend asks, ‘What happened? Who brought you up from the water?’ Rabbi Akiva says to him, ‘A plank from the ship floated by me, and I clung to it. Holding it tight, I bowed my head with each wave that came toward me, and let it pass over me knowing I’d once again be brought to the surface.’ Sharon then turned to us and said, ‘...

Share There are so many books about grief and for grieving people, and this one offers something unique: It asks grieving people and those who want to help to do more than say, “There are no words.” In June 2019, Colin Campbell with his wife Gail survived the car accident in which a drunk driver took the lives of their two teenage children. Campbell admits that before going through profound loss himself, he too would often say to those who experienced terrible loss, “There are no words.” But grieving takes place in community or not at all, Camp...

Share Karl Rahner (1904-1984), who was born on this day, has been called one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the twentieth century. He spent most of his life teaching theology at universities. Rahner believed that prayer was the most important element of the Christian way, saying in a discussion with a friend, "I believe because I pray." The turning point in his life came when he was 60 and participated in the Second Vatican Council (1962 - 1965). Although previously seen as a traditionalist, the German theologian was transforme...

Share Like the most astonishing prophetic revelations, Neptune Frost is impossible to aptly interpret. It’s a visceral experience that must be approached with generous curiosity. For viewers willing to be absorbed into its vibrant truth-telling, the film unfurls like a sacred ritual that will leave them changed, even if they can’t quite name what’s happened to them. The film’s genre is most appropriately defined as African-futurist, a label coined by author Nnedi Okorafur to name a creative aesthetic and philosophy that fuses African culture, h...

Share In an article in Livescience, Brandon Specktor reports that there were several hundred reported UFO sightings in 2022. Unidentified flying objects, or unidentified aerial phenomenon, as the government calls them, have been taken more seriously by U.S. officials in recent years, starting in 2007 with a small, secretly funded program that investigated reports of military encounters. The goal of this task force was to explore sightings of strange objects in the sky that could potentially pose a threat to national security. Our fascination wi...

Share “Death is not a cosmic mistake. Woven into the warp and woof of existence, the presence of death deepens our appreciation of life. It also regenerates our psyches in preparation for harvesting. The more we embrace our mortality not as an aberration of God and nature, but as an agent urging us on to life completion, the more our anxiety transforms into feelings of awe, thanksgiving, and appreciation.”—- Rebbe Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, founder of Sage-ing International Living is a British drama directed by Oliver Hermanus from a screenplay ...

A sense of interconnectedness is central to self-compassion. It’s recognizing that all humans are flawed works-in-progress, that everyone fails, makes mistakes, and experiences hardship in life. Self-compassion honors the unavoidable fact that life entails suffering, for everyone, without exception. While this may seem obvious, it’s so easy to forget. We fall into the trap of believing that things are “supposed” to go well and that something has gone wrong when they don’t. Of course, it’s highly likely—in fact inevitable—that we’ll make mistake...

Share “People all over the world are hungry for peace of mind, for finding ways to improve their relationships with others, and for finding meaningful ways of life. A loving and generous kindness can certainly make a difference. Kindness, a precious God-given gift to us, is one of the sweet expressions of love.”—- Jean Maalouf in The Healing Power of Kindness The setting for this spiritually rich drama is an old movie palace in a once glorious seaside town which in 1981 has fallen upon hard times. Hilary (Olivia Colman) is the theatre’s duty ma...

Despite mindfulness being about stretching our comfort zones, after a couple decades of practice sometimes it feels like it is my comfort zone. I’ve been steeped in the practice for so long—studying Buddhism as an undergrad and grad student, writing about it, and sharing mindfulness practices with my students at the school where I am a Mindfulness Director and PE teacher. I’ve become something of an ambassador to stillness, willing to discuss mindfulness and meditation anytime, anywhere. Yet there was a moment last year when I felt stumped. I w...