Meditation instructors often talk about thoughts arising and passing away in consciousness, as if they just come out of nowhere and go to nowhere. I’ve found otherwise. No part of your mind is superfluous. The human brain uses up too much energy for evolution to allow unnecessary parts to persist. Each part does something that helped your ancestors survive and pass their genes on to you. For example, some part[…] Keep reading →

Different people define middle age differently, but having just turned 51 I think I’m in it by all definitions. Physical My first sense of my body physically declining came in my early thirties, when my potential to compete in ultimate began to decline. Before then, I always felt motivation to practice since I knew the next year my potential would be higher. After then, no matter how much I practiced,[…] Keep reading →

Yesterday I ran outdoors for the first time this spring. Two days before I lifted weights and was still feeling tired, plus I’m fifty years old, so I took it easy and ran at a comfortable, even slow pace. Now I’m so sore that tossing and turning in bed wakes me up. [EDIT, the next morning: Note that I’m not complaining in this post. I’m just observing. If anything, I[…] Keep reading →

Unrelated to sustainability, sidchas, leadership, education, famous no-packaging vegan stews, burpees, and my usual subjects, I’m embarking on a new experiment. For years I’ve woken up to mild back pain. I suspected my mattress was getting old. I bought it around ten years ago and it felt like some parts lost their support. Was I sleeping on a not-flat surface? Maybe it was just me getting old. I started looking[…] Keep reading →

I’ve been avoiding things I devalue lately. After writing about the day after Thanksgiving, also known as Buy Nothing Day, I decided to strive to buy nothing but food that month and succeeded, if you don’t disallow that I bought two things that I later returned. I’ll write more about it when I eventually do buy something, as I’m still going. Next, I decided to avoid social media and news[…] Keep reading →

An auspicious beginning to my second decade of my calisthenics sidcha: my heels reached the ground in one of my stretches, the downward dog. I did yoga regularly for a few years before starting burpees. Yoga means a lot of downward dogs. In all those years, my heels never touched the ground while doing them. At best I reached something like this: This morning my heels reached the ground. I[…] Keep reading →

I’ve held back on sharing this because it felt too presumptuous. To remind you the context, I’ve found that to lead on sustainability, you need experience in three areas: Leading Science Living the values you promote I know of almost no one with experience in all three. Not Gore, DiCaprio, Thunberg, or any of the big names people associate with sustainability. Previous guest Alexandra Paul fits the bill. For a[…] Keep reading →