Walk into any church, and you will see people swimming in a sea of emotions (everything from shame and guilt to love and ecstasy). That may be the reason some people think that the more...

Being positive all the time is such a catchy idea, and it’s easy to preach. I guess that’s why it is popular. But life reveals itself in successions of up’s and down’s and if you...

You can tend to a garden every day for 20, 30 or 40 years. But if one day you stop giving it loving attention and care it will rapidly deteriorate. Weeds will start to grow,...

If you want to increase your self-confidence as a yoga teacher very fast – go out there, face your fears, and teach as much as you possibly can!

Simplicity is everywhere in nature, and meditation is a natural state. Meditation is a state of peaceful equilibrium, the fourth state of consciousness, and is always available to every single human being.

It is not lack of ability, but lack of motivation, lack of focus, and lack of self-confidence that prevents most aspiring authors from finishing what they started.

Many people close themselves off from the world when they are under pressure. That is understandable. I have gone through periods when I didn’t want to meet people because I didn’t feel good about my...

By thinking mostly about everything that has gone wrong, is going wrong, and can possibly go wrong, the thinker is bound to end up in a lousy mental and emotional state.

Short term goals are often based on dissatisfaction, and actions based on dissatisfaction will eventually lead to a life of unhappiness.

Self-confidence is built from the inside out and has little or nothing to do with outside circumstances.

If you stick with the definition of spirituality as a peaceful internal state (a.k.a. deep, dreamless sleep while awake), then you will ignore some of the hallucinatory experiences that are bound to happen when you...

Motivated authors sacrifice TV time, sleep, hobbies, and even family time.

Not wanting to change, constantly fighting change, and being afraid of change; these are all extremely stressful mental dispositions, because let’s face it – change happens! Learn to embrace change, flow with change and even...

Not everything that is related to yoga is equally beneficial.

Gandhi is an example of a man who grew from being self-centered as he was learning to become a lawyer in England, to becoming more family- and social oriented in South-Africa, where he led a...

A person with less knowledge and more self-confidence (which is primarily a way of thinking and acting) will often run circles around a person with more knowledge and less self-confidence; which means that self-confidence has...

Walk into any mosque, temple, church, or synagogue and you will find differing examples, different ways of interpreting God. The One True God is hard to find when a mishmash of human traits is constantly...

Whether one is remaining alert (mindfulness), focusing on a single thought or phrase (mantra), or mentally exploring ones inner world (visualization), all are one form of concentration or another.

Write a book, not the book.

One of the hallmarks of great teachers is that they rejoice when their students surpass them. Encouraging an atmosphere of questioning and inviting people to grow within your classroom isn’t necessarily easy; which must explain...

For reasons unknown, the philosophical aspect of the yoga movement has had to make way for the yoga fit revolution; today’s image of a yogi is a slender and scantily clad young female doing postures...

Growth seems to evolve from a narrow-minded, constricted worldview (selfish) to an ever-more-encompassing worldview (multiperspective caring). To put it simply, the more self-centered you are, the lower you tend to land on these scales, while...

Self-confidence can be defined in two sentences. (1) I trust myself to face life’s challenges and (2) I trust myself to follow my dreams and goals.

…no matter how liberal a church may seem, Christian dogma still revolves around an ancient, paternalistic image of God the Father, who quite frankly isn’t much more believable than the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus.

You see, meditation is not a fabricated state. It is natural. It is accessible to all. And in the same way that a person who learns how to run, can run any time they want...

There is no such thing as lack of time, only unclear priorities and lack of motivation. It is better to abandon a project than to work on it half-heartedly for a protracted period of time.

In our youth, we may have ridiculed the cost-of-living-index family, with their house, two cars, and two kids, but today we are pro-family. We have seen the damage done by the previous generation and have...

The yogic scriptures paint a picture of perfection, and perfection can be your aim, but I can tell you sad stories about myself and others who have entered into a state of premature holiness with...

Breaking away from old psychological memes requires a Herculean effort in many cases. In essence, we are outgrowing a worldview while maintaining a relation-ship of sorts. Transcending an ideology can feel like going through a...

Self-confidence is not a fixed way of being. People are not born with certain levels of self-confidence, it can be acquired, and it can be lost.

Is our rational and self-reliant generation really supposed to accept the idea that God the Almighty not only created the universe but, interestingly enough, also has a stake in our lives?

Meditation is… a state that can best be described as deep dreamless sleep while awake.

Once we got closer to the origins of these Eastern practices, we found that the monks and swamis were just as dogmatic and paternalistic, just as literal and conservative in their approach to spirituality as...

Dreams seem to generate a special kind of passion and willpower, both of which help people navigate the seas of life.

If you decide to focus on one thing at a time, instead of trying to solve everything at once, and just do that one thing, then you will feel a sudden decrease in stress.

Being a good parent is not an obligation, it is a choice. Plenty of people fall short in the parent category and quite a few refuse to accept it. You will do a much better...

I think your belief structure is childish,” does not amount to persecution. Insensitivity is not the same as harassment or oppression.

The idea of a personal God who protects us, loves us, and then punishes us by not allowing us into Heaven, but instead casts us into Hell for eternity if we haven’t met his standards...

Concentration is… a relaxed mental state, where the stream of consciousness flows in a single direction, either focusing on a phrase or mental picture, or alternately, a state in which the mind is alert and...

These superhero and mythical stories have, in many cases, replaced Biblical stories as vehicles for communal myths, but they are hardly any better than ancient magical adventures tinged with mythical archetypes and the decidedly unnuanced...

This tendency to defend a belief structure is true in all cases, even the rational. Never underestimate our ability to convince ourselves of what we wish to be true, especially if we have invested time...

One myth that has become established in the self-development arena is that it only takes 21 days to form a new habit. This simply isn’t true in all cases. Sometimes it takes a shorter time,...

Relaxation is… a state between waking and sleeping, where the body is completely still and the mind is allowed to flow freely from one thought to another, or alternately, a state in which the mind...

outdated social constructs,” and while that is partially true, the social construct stance becomes clear reductionism when it totally discounts clear differences in male and female biology (i.e., androgyny is not the same as equality).

It cannot be denied that as institutions, churches do good work. They operate schools and hospitals. Their charity outreaches, which take care of the homeless, sick, and hungry, have real impacts on communities. And while...

The building blocks of meditation are relaxation and concentration. If you cannot relax, you cannot meditate. If you cannot concentrate, you cannot meditate. No exceptions.

For more than twenty years, I have been seeking a way to be both rational and spiritual. I have been looking for a ray of hope in an otherwise-compartmentalized world in which people segregate religious...

The worst possible approach to a problem is waiting until it becomes overwhelming or irreversible, and that is exactly what many people do. They put dealing with stress on the backburner until they start to...

Concentration is the doorway through which the meditative state becomes available.

Stay within the confines of your chosen topic. If you start to stray away from your topic and find an urge to showcase everything that you know, resist that urge. Remember that you are writing...