Childhood Adversity Accelerates Biological Aging
A recent study reveals that childhood experiences of violence, abuse, and neglect can significantly accelerate biological aging and impact health outcomes. Researchers found that...
Parents of teenagers, take heart! There is affection after adolescence. Even friendship. For those of you who’d like to deep-freeze your teen till twenty-one — you’re not alone. It’s a toss-up whether puberty is tougher on the kids or the parents...

Adolescent girls face intense societal pressure. Here's how role models can nurture strength, courage, and compassion in their lives.
Who are we really? What is really the meaning of Life? How can we attain lasting happiness in the face of our seemingly endless troubles? These questions are basic to our lives, and it is from these questions that the practice of Zen has its birth. Zen can be the compassionate scalpel that removes the layers of accrued opinions, beliefs, and...
Imagine the presence of a great warmth that feels utterly nurturing, good, and peaceful. See it as the most beautiful color or colors that you can imagine. Feel it as having the texture or sensation of something incredibly soft, like a favorite blanket or article of clothing, the skin of a baby, or the fur of an animal.
The weeds keep multiplying in our garden, which is our mind ruled by fear. Rip them out and call them by name. The illnesses, the rejections, the defamations, the injustices, the aloneness, all the "I should haves" and "I didn't do's." In place of the ugly weeds of fear, plant now the roses of Hope, Love...
Hope is an expectation, not always with absolute certainty, but with confidence and assurance that something can or will happen. Hope is a desire accompanied by a belief in fulfillment. Hope is a force that urges us on — stimulating us to continue. It is a powerful force that we...
I realize the whole universe is at my fingertips, as is my willingness to manifest what is needed in my reality. Every experience of life is God teaching me. As I look in this pure state of awareness, I feel the pure energy within my whole body. From the rhythm of my breathing, I feel a quiet state of attunement — one with God.
Problems do not limit your aliveness or happiness. They are simply challenges that give you opportunities to make choices and grow. As you increasingly open to yourself, happiness wells up from deep inside you. Feel it. Remember a happy feeling from the past, or imagine one now. If you like, tie it to a scene or image. Feel the feeling. Be in the middle of it. Let the happiness of that feeling fill you full and overflow beyond you, filling the room.
The phrase "thy will be done" in the Lord's Prayer is a statement of resignation for many, the calling down of a power to do something that may not be what we had in mind. It's as though we're saying, "Since I can't have what I want in life, I guess I'll have to settle...
Meditation does work. Millions of learned and loving people have practiced it throughout the ages, because it clears the mind and opens the heart. The current interest in meditation has inspired many modern teachers to simplify the ancient techniques...
Relaxation and muscle balance are necessary to the practices of concentration and meditation so that (1) the body may not be injured by the mental efforts and (2) the mental work may not be spoiled by bodily discomfort. Third, we have to remember that bodily attitudes are associated with states of feeling, such as lying down with sleep, and...
Co-meditation is based on the principle that a certain mode of respiration evokes a particular state of mind and vice-versa. The power of the breath and the breath-mind relationship has been recognized for centuries by many cultures and religious traditions. Like other forms of meditation, the deep abdominal breathing produced by co-meditation affects the...
Take a moment now and find the very center of your energy. Let your focus soften as you become one with your surroundings for the next few moments as we travel together. Ask permission to join with the Earth and for her to be a part of your circle at this time. Breathe deeply and feel the energy shift in the room...
Jenny was eager to talk to me about her five-year-old nephew, who she was beginning to believe was the reincarnation of her grandfather. She hadn't known that it was possible for a child to be the reincarnation of a family member. Now Dylan's strange behaviors were beginning to make sense to her.
Could any of us watching Peter Pan struggling with his shadow -- to find his shadow, to keep his shadow and, ultimately, to "bind" his shadow to him -- have known that the shadow carries powerful psychological implications? We might have noticed that Peter seemed different once his shadow was firmly attached. He was still delightful and charming but slightly subdued and not quite so self-centered and irresponsible. A bit more... dare we say, grown up? As Peter Pan could tell us, the shadow is...

by John Payne. The time has come for you to realize that you are always in safety. The reason why you fear such things is that you do not yet believe that you are the creator of your own experience. As we have said many, many times before, that which you turn your attention to is that which you draw unto yourself...
For eons of time, prophets, seers, religions and Holy Books have foretold the coming of an Age when Heaven would manifest on Earth, an Age in which Humanity would develop the latent powers within and reunite with our own Divinity, an Age when transformation would occur at an atomic, cellular level, and...
Perennial non-conformists, the natives of winter's second astrological month are reform minded, protective of individual liberties, and in search of the truth no matter what consequences await them at the end of their quest.
A practical earth sign, Capricorn (December 22 to January 19) is the month when fanciful dreams become well-plotted schemes. It took Benjamin Franklin (born Jan. 17, 1706) to proffer the adage that a "penny saved is a penny earned". Capricorns love to master the moment and set up systems which seem capable of lasting forever.
As the twelfth and final spoke in the astrological wheel, it is up to Pisces to break things down into their subtlest forms. Governed by cloud-enshrouded Neptune, the sign of the Fish is associated with refined spiritual energies on the transcendent level.
If the abundance of books on a specific subject measures the pulse of popular culture, there is a seeming revival of soul as a topic of cultural interest. The immense profusion of these works suggests a renewed claim to bring soul back to the attention of the postmodern consciousness, to reawaken the sacred in our everyday lives. But what is soul and what does it mean to suffer its loss?