For 35 years, Diana Nyad had dreamed of swimming from Cuba to Florida. As she made her fifth attempt last week, we got to see her turn that dream into reality. She completed the 110 mile swim in 53 hours and became the first person ever to do so without a cage. “You’re never too […]
Tending to the Multitasking Brain
Can you imagine Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel Ceiling while chatting on his iPhone?I don’t think so. Sure, we can brush our teeth and watch TV at the same time. Cook and talk to our spouse. Make the bed and listen to music. Fold laundry and sing. But no matter how clever, adept or accomplished […]
Lessons from a Sportin’ Swami
In the 1990s,when I began practicing yoga at New York’s Integral Yoga Institute, I often noticed Swami Ramananda studying the sports sections of the daily newspapers. How totally charming, I thought. Who knew swamis could be die-hard sports fans? Ramananda has loved baseball since his earliest years. “I was 6 or 7 when Mickey Mantle […]
Barely Survived the Holiday
My husband and I recently re-certified in CPR – something we were even more motivated to do after learning what my dear friends Hillary and Bill Greenberg had experienced last year. It was the Costa Rican holiday from hell. Swept away by an underwater surge that ripped her regulator from her mouth, Hilary sank 30 […]
Cultivating Happiness
My father used to tell me, “You’re lucky; you’re one of the happy ones.” I never thought a lot about this, but, obviously, I never forgot it. Could happiness actually be genetic? In her splendid book The How of Happiness, psychology professor Sonya Lyubomirsky shows that about half of it is. Interestingly, very little happiness […]
Change Your Mind, Change Your World: Affirmations
Listen to this post A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes. – Mahatma Gandhi Our thoughts color every perception and filter all of our experiences. They drive our moods and our desires. They limit or loosen our imagination. Consider placebos, by which a white lie essentially becomes a […]