Contempt for the body, based on its supposedly corrupt, limited and limiting nature is deep in the heart of our culture. And despite the popularity of Yoga posture practice, this also lies deep in the unconscious shadows of contemporary Yoga practitioners. This contempt drives us from its unrecognized depths not only to long for a life after death, to imagine an eternal soul, but also to use and abuse the body in seeking those and other delusional goals, such as physical perfection or moral purity.

I'll need to know if you can be still when I storm. If you can be a rock when I am at sea. And if you can stay free when I get stuck in a rut, to help me find the breeze again.

Sometimes things happen in our lives and it seems as though we cannot see through the darkness to the other side. More will be revealed as time passes, but being in the thick of the fog of the unknown can be difficult to navigate.

I am a wild woman, a strange ocean being digging through the soil for her hidden sealskin. A beautiful girl whose whole being is her heart, who feels it all, quickly and deeply, but also carefully and cautiously because she is out of practice and because she knows she doesn’t quite fit in. And this strong strange fragile gorgeous being, right now, without knowing anything about then or later, without any foolish guarantee but with an honest promise, loves you.

I believe that we all have that call of the Divine inside us, and I believe we're being sent signals every day to open up to our Divinity. And let me be very clear here -- we are all Divine beings.

Lean into the variegated trill of song. Hug the hollow bones of your graceful wings. Soak and rinse in the soulful rain's song. Wear a cape of chartreuse moss. Create an emerald privet. Protect your crimson heart. Lay an altar with tokens of lapis, moonstone and stardust. Sprinkle twigs, leaves and pinecones; your heart knows these treasures well.

One of the things I love most about our community is that we have people who help others by sharing their knowledge and experience. I can't tell you how much I love that. Our community is a family of people from all around the globe, and I couldn't be happier to provide a space for us to help one another.

The truth is, our lives are not destined to go exactly the way we want them to. If everyone lived out their childhood dreams, we'd all be astronauts, or living in castles with Prince Charming. Life can be a bitch sometimes. We imagined it would all be so easy; we plotted our grand six-figure career, our whirlwind romance, our 2-4 children, a dog, and a happily-ever-after ending. But it doesn't tend to work out the way the movies would have us believe.

You wake up with good intentions that you are going to start exercising today, but morning duties (pets, partner, kids, coffee, dishes, email check-in, impromptu and inconvenient texts and messages) happen, and before you know it -- although you put on your running shoes hours ago -- it's high noon, way too hot, you still have to clean the kitchen, but you are actually hungry now, so you are in a bind about whether to make a hearty brunch or go on your morning walk first… but then again, you can't walk on a full stomach after and… hey! I haven't even brushed my teeth yet!

Through meditation I realized I really would love a dedicated and loving partnership. It was through this journey I realized I deeply desired to be a mother. It was a sense of knowing this was part of my path in this lifetime, rather than something I just wanted. I shared this with my partner, and he reaffirmed that he did not want marriage and was unsure about children. He was unwilling to compromise, and once again asked me not to bring it up again. In that moment, I knew I could no longer go on stuffing my own truth. I knew I was meant to move on. It wasn't even my decision any longer. God was making the moves for me. Before I knew it, I was making phone calls, booking flights, and making necessary arrangements to leave. I felt it was time to finally make that move to Boulder, Colorado. And so I did.

Thich Nhat Hanh says that if every single religion had one person who truly lived the heart of their religion, they would be practicing Buddhism. It is a practice of living in such a way that every religion of every name would be proud to claim and many do -- under a different label. To me, Buddhism in practice is actually living the way you say you do when you go to church on Sunday. There's not a person out there who doesn't know what I'm talking about.

According to teachings in Kundalini Yoga, which by many has been dubbed the Yoga of Awareness, the alternate nostril breathing technique not only balances the right and left hemispheres of the brain, it also calms the mind, clears your energy, and increase feelings of peace and serenity. You can also use it to help when you need mental clarity and to uplift your mood.

We can choose to count the many blessings lining the shadowed stages of this journey called Life, or we can moan and groan and fuss and stew every step of the way.

The move to Hawaii was one serious journey that rattled me to my core. It was a fast-paced episode of fear-facing and fear-conquering.

She spent her weekends inside the walls of a prison visiting her mother. The unconditional love the little girl had made her believe in lies and live off false hope. She moved in with her father, she was trying to cope.

Isn't that exactly what marriage is? A binding contract between two people (traditionally a heterosexual couple with the purpose of procreation) wrought with expectation and impending disappointment and heartbreak.

As my life and sight continue to grow, change, and evolve, I'm left sometimes feeling stuck or confused. I've arrived into a whole new world. A world of energy. A world I never knew before. I feel like a newborn baby, experiencing myself and others from a new perspective.

We've done such a thorough job in our culture of equating money with the worth of a person that when you tell someone openly about your modest financial status, they tend to do you the favor of being embarrassed for you, because clearly you forgot to be.

If they would have looked behind them as they walked away, they would have seen the way the sky began to vibrate, grow, belch out a treacherous gleam of hot light that sent searing into the eyes of every man and woman and child.

And he scanned her eyes, like he was recognizing something of him in her. She kept his gaze. She was high as a kite, so she didn't know how long they looked at each other -- it could have been only two seconds, or it could have been two minutes. Amy wasn’t sure what the standard amount of time to look in someone’s eyes was, before you were supposed to look away. Most people could barely last a second, because any time after that, it meant something, and something happened. At a certain point, it became intimate- they saw you and you saw them. And something uncontrollable took place. That’s why most people avoided it. The nurse cleared her throat. “Amy, is there anyone we should call?” she asked.