Mindful Living
Making Peace with our Bodies
Two percent. That’s how many women chose the word “beautiful” to describe themselves in a recent worldwide study led by researchers from Harvard University and the London School of Economics. It’s a disturbingly low number, but perhaps not really surprising since women everywhere have trouble liking their bodies. Playwright and activist Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues (Villard, 1998) and The Good Body (Villard, 2004) puts it like this: “It doesn’t matter where I’ve been in the world, whether it’s Tehran where women are smashing their noses to look less Iranian, or in Beijing where they are breaking their legs and adding bone to be taller, or in Dallas where they are surgically whittling their feet in order to fit into Manolo Blahniks or Jimmy Choos. Everywhere, the women I meet generally hate one particular part of their bodies.” ...The Optimism Factor
My dog died about a month ago. She was 11—ancient for a Great Dane—and had been gradually losing control of her back end for months. By the time my husband and I made the heart-wrenching decision to have her euthanized, she could barely walk and hadn’t relieved herself outside the house in almost half a year. To any rational person, our decision was the only right and humane one. And yet, the instant I felt the life leave Daisy’s body, I was overcome with self-doubt. Had we really tried everything to help her live a good, long life? If we had walked her more frequently, tried aquatherapy, kept her on that “miracle” joint supplement that didn’t seem to be doing any good … would we have slowed the deterioration and, thus, prevented her death?
Within hours, the tentacles of my grief extended throughout my universe. Not only was Daisy dead, ...5 Yoga Poses for Tight Hips
As a yoga teacher, I often ask my students what they would like to focus on in class and it is not unusual to hear them cry out: “hip openers!” There are various reasons for tight hips and yoga students of all levels can find benefits from soothing and stretching the muscles that affect hip mobility.
One of the most common ways we create hip tightness and inflexibility is through an excess of sitting. Many of us are seated for many hours in a single day; at the computer, in the ...Charity Begins at Home
Healing the world may require that we begin by healing ourselves
The world has no shortage of problems—starving children, diseases and epidemics, natural catastrophes—and, of course, the host of other environmental, health, and social problems we’ve created for ourselves. While dealing with these things is essential, perhaps it’s necessary for us to begin healing the world by being kind to ourselves, and by giving attention to our immediate environment and the beings ...
