Living Well

Dying Practice

“Walk around the room…Allow your movements to take you…without knowledge of the next direction…Move your body…and feel. Include the feeling of breath and pause…paying special attention to the pause….” We are dying.…

Minding the Gap

In London, an underground train is called “the tube.” When the doors of the tube open, the loudspeaker spits out three words, “Mind the gap,” a safety warning to pay attention to…

Questions and Ant Sirs?

“We have a deal,” Jen says to me. “I don’t go into their territory. But if they come in the house, I kill them.” This sounded reasonable to me. One more answer…

Howling with Hurricanes

It’s Thursday afternoon, and I’m driving home from Co-Opportunity in Santa Monica, happy about my fresh organic groceries and my older sister’s upcoming visit in November. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and…

Standing with the Ancestors

I am standing in Yosemite Valley, jaw gaping, eyes gazing up. Before me stands 3,000-foot-high, white granite El Capitan, the chief of all “stone people.” I am on my way home from…

Medicine Dance: The Sensation of Sanity

It’s 8:30 on a Tuesday morning and the valley is already warm. I left the canyon early enough to take Wells Road and enjoy a tree-lined drive to Tarzana, avoiding the speed…

Making Noise

I arrive just as Kevin is wrapping up his How-We-Behave-on-the-Wheel talk. “No more pictures; turn off your cell phones until the ceremony ends… etc.” I walk around the circle searching for a…

A Slice of Paradise

I am sitting in the back yard of an upscale house on Long Island, in a lovely neighborhood surrounded by other upscale houses. The sky is overcast, the air wet and chilled.…

Mother/Earth

After three weeks of dancing with some annoying blend of virus and flu, Shiloh and I are once again taking our evening walk along the Santa Maria trail. Recent rains have brought…

Friends and Flowers

I don’t go to hospitals–at all. Nineteen years ago, in the middle of trying to push my nine-and-a-half pound son out of my only slightly larger body, I asked my midwife if…