Good Clean Reads

“Tension is who you think you should be.  Relaxation is who you are.” ~Chinese Proverb

For the first time in weeks I am not experiencing searing pain in my back. My left shoulder injury was corrected today by a the skillful manipulation of a great chiropractor and as I walked out the door, I wept with relief. Over the last few weeks, I have come to value feeling well above all else. My compassion...

Relationship Bootcamp Week 5

“Love doesn’t sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all of the time, made new.”  ~Ursula K. LeGuin

Almost anyone can fall in love; our biological imperative to mate kicks in opening our hearts and flooding our nervous system with the euphoric experience of idealized connection. In these early moments of love’s embrace, we experience love...

“Holiness is the quality or value that things or persons have when they help people to become fully human.”  -Jewish Prayer Book

Tonight begins Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, a celebration of renewal that asks you to look at what you have created over the last year and what you aspire to the next. It is the beginning of the high holy days and the doorway to seeking forgiveness. It is a fresh...

I have written more than 120 articles about touch but have just recently learned its powerful healing effect firsthand. The last several days, I have been wracked with a painful pinched nerve in my upper back that has exhausted me. My best healing practices haven’t been working and the amount of energy that managing the pain has taken up has left me bereft. Last night, even sleep evaded me. The...

by Anastasia Strgar

At the dawn of my 23rd year I find myself on a whole new life track. This does not have anything to do with going on a crazy cross country adventure or skydiving over the Grand Canyon or anything like that (although that’d be awesome); it rather, has more to do with finally freeing myself from old negative thinking patterns about life and even more so, myself.

The last half...

“Perhaps everything terrible is in its being something that needs our love.” -Rainer Maria Rilke

The last few days have been marked by an acute and relentless pain in my upper back and neck. It has prevented me from most higher level thinking and has awakened in me a deep compassion for those who live with chronic pain, as well as a profound gratitude for our ability to heal. There is nothing like...

“Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”  -Voltaire

So it turns out I did win the Tom Holce award last night and I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect and beautiful close to the summer of gratitude than standing up in front of 800 of the most successful entrepreneurs in Oregon and saying thank you for recognizing my work in making love real...

Tomorrow, I will find out if I won the Tom Holce award at the annual OEN entreprenurial celebration. I close my eyes and imagine walking up to receive my award. I have been working at savoring these moments in my mind and not being afraid to hope for the best. It is a different stance from the way I have trained myself to “not count my chickens before they hatch.”

The truth is that no matter what...

I know that forgiveness is the action verb when it comes to love and have spent years trying to learn the mysterious path that leads one to the freedom and peace that comes from forgiving. As with most things, we think we understand how something works, only to have life throw us another event to test us, to see what we really have learned.

I grew up in a family that defined dysfunction. I...