it’s taken me a long time to realize that I can just hold her without trying to fix her.”

the unfaced and unfelt parts of our psyche are the source of all neurosis and suffering.

In this way, times of great suffering can become times of profound spiritual insight and opening. Nearly all of us have faced seasons in our life where everything seemed to be falling apart. At these times, all the beliefs upon which we based our life are torn from their moorings; we thought we understood how to live life but now we feel lost in a

What we experience as the “self” is an aggregate of familiar thoughts, emotions and patterns of behavior. The mind binds these together, creating a story about a personal, individual entity that has continuity through time. Everything we experience is subsumed into this story of self and becomes my experience.

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.” By inhabiting my body with awareness, I was discovering the roots of my reactivity. I had been avoiding the unpleasant sensations that make up fear and sorrow. By opening mindfully to the play of sensations, the grip of my anger and stories naturally

When we feel anxious, instead of turning on the TV or making a phone call or mentally obsessing, we sit still and feel our discomfort or restlessness. In this pause we let go of thinking and doing, and we become intimate with what is happening in our body, heart and mind.

Audre Lorde tells us, “We have been raised to fear … our deepest cravings. And the fear of our deepest cravings keeps them suspect, keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, and leads us to settle for … many facets of our own oppression.”

Yes is an inner practice of acceptance in which we willingly allow our thoughts and feelings to naturally arise and pass away.

Mother Teresa’s surprising insight was: “The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis but rather the feeling of not belonging.”