I hope everyone is enjoying the first glimmers of spring in the DC area. I'm seeing signs of spring in the neighborhood around my Washington DC acupuncture office. Traditionally, in many cultures, the beginning of February is considered the beginning of spring. (The equinox on March 23 is actually the peak of spring energy.) This is why the Chinese start their new year in the beginning of February. Gong Hay Fat Choy! Or in Mandarin, Xin Nian Kaui Le! 2011 The Year of the Rabbit If you really ...
Just before the holidays, a patient of mine asked me a simple question: What do you eat? She was interested in changing her diet to improve her health. We had talked about including more whole foods, vegetables, protein, high quality fats from real foods, fiber from whole food sources, and so on. So, I was beginning to list out all of the recipes I use for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, when all of a sudden, two Sundays ago in the New York Times, I ran across a short article that seemed like it was practically written for ...
From The Transparency of Things, by Rupert Spira www.rupertspira.com Pages 34-36 Meditation is not an activity. It is the cessation of an activity. . . However, in order to understand that meditation is not an activity, we first come to the understanding that it is the cessation of an activity. This understanding is a very efficient tool for undermining the belief that meditation is something that we do. Once we have fully understood that meditation is not an activity, the activity that we previously considered to be meditation will naturally come to an end. ...
Unusually for me, I found myself fairly wide awake last night, around 2:45 am, and I started wondering how I was going to get back to sleep. I remembered that my mom had mentioned a book by a woman who had tried all the western and alternative cures for insomnia, and had finally found that qigong was the only thing that really helped her. I have to say that I like the title: Wide Awake: What I Learned About Sleep from Doctors, Drug Companies, Dream Experts, and a Reindeer Herder in the Arctic Circle, by Patricia Morrisroe As a ...
Rupert Spira, in his book, The Transparency of Things: Contemplating the Nature of Experience, explains in greater detail exactly what is involved in the process of welcoming difficult emotions. He also connects this process to the deepest spiritual perspective. From The Transparency of Things: Contemplating the Nature of Experience, by Rupert Spira, pages 240-242. Italics in […] are my commentary. Questioner: What part do feelings and the body have to play in this investigation [of Consciousness and Presence]? Rupert Spira: Much of the mind’s activity is designed to avoid feeling. For instance, any form ...
Why do many people turn to meditation? They are interested in relieving their suffering. Suffering comes in many forms – physical, emotional, and mental. As I mentioned in a previous article about finding a meditation style that is right for you, there are many meditative approaches to healing on all three of these levels. In this article, I’d like to discuss a form of meditation that I’ve found to be very helpful for the emotional and mental levels of suffering. It centers around the concept of welcoming, or allowing things to be just as they ...
