1. Be born in the 1960s (preferably in a First World nation)

2. Have groovy hippy parents who introduced you to Eastern philosophies, yoga, mysticism, and counter-cultural movements such as marijuana and free-love at an early age; or have repressive religious parents who unintentionally provoked you to rebel and find...

Whither is yoga headed in America?

"It's all good," I often hear fellow yogis say--or truisms such as, "Yoga is evolving"--when they hawk their "Yoga and Chocolate" workshops and "Yoga for Better Butts" videos and create their individual "brands" of yoga.

Last year I corresponded with the president of Yoga...

When I think of mindfulness -- as distinct from the practice or tool of Mindfulness Meditation -- I think of a way of being in the world. Living mindfully, living consciously -- having a beacon such as love, peace or ease guide our every decision and action, rather than allowing...

I worked at 9-6 jobs in NYC from August of 1989 through July of 1991 when the pace of the city started to overwhelm me and I decided to move to Paris. During those two hectic years in New York I had grown accustomed to eating Chinese delivery lunches at...

Like highly sophisticated spacecraft traveling at light speed through a very hectic universe, our minds operate on autopilot most of the time. Basic meditation is a tool that we can use to take ourselves off of auto-pilot, reboot our hard drives, clear out the caches, regain the most propitious long-term...

Mindfulness entails trying to get the mind to look at the mind, trying to observe how our operating systems are running. Using the analogy of software, you will quickly realize how difficult it is to get your Windows 8 or Mac OS X operating system to debug itself. You normally...

Intellectuals will immediately recognize any discussion on the objectification of women in yoga as a recapitulation of the immemorial Apollonian/Dionysian debate also found in Death in Venice, Lolita and other artworks. As you are already aware, the Apollonians are admirers of form and beauty, while the Dionysians simply wish to...

Last year I was on a panel at a yoga conference where Arun Deva stated, "Yoga and business are like oil and water." I taught yoga at 24 Hour Fitness for three years and I quickly learned to reframe teaching 40-75 students per class as seva, seeing I was only...

You are meeting a college roommate at noon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You haven't seen her in twenty-five years and you were surprised when she sent you a friend request on Facebook. She's driving into the city from Greenwich and you're going to take the subway uptown. You're...

"We have art lest we perish of the truth." -- Nietzsche

A few months ago my dear friend Agapi Stassinopoulos invited me to a screening of Decoding Deepak, and during the Q&A Deepak Chopra humbly announced the manner in which he sees his vocation. "I'm part of the...

"It is not true that money can't buy happiness. It can, that's the good news. The bad news is that it's someone else's happiness." -- Nick Hornby

The holidays can be a uniquely misery-inducing time for some people -- Noah Levine says that the Judeo-Christian holiday season is tantamount to...

Watch the TEDTalk that inspired this post.

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

In his...

Watch the TEDTalk that inspired this post.

I used to get peeved when I called Federal Express and their voice answering system said, "Please hold. A representative will be with you momentarily." I thought, "Well, that won't do much good. I won't be able to say...

A buddy of mine got fourth row center seats to Bruce Springsteen at Wrigley Field last month -- sans any inconvenience charges -- so I reached into my bucket of frequent flier miles and flew to Chi-town.

"Because the Night" is one...

Call me jaded, but in my workshops on authentic relationships I sometimes joke that, "Marriage for life was a fantastic idea in the 13th century when the average lifespan was 27. But now that the average person gets married at 26 and lives until 77, committing yourself to one person...

Two of my favorite texts from university explore the impending chaos that would erupt with the fall of the Judeo-Christian ethos. In The Second Coming, Yeats states that "mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." In The Greatest Danger, Nietzsche states that "the greatest labour of human beings hitherto has...

"It is not true that money can't buy happiness. It can, that's the good news. The bad news is that it's someone else's happiness." -- Nick Hornby

Spoiler alert: The last line, the summation of my new experiential documentary Mindfulness for Urban Depression is an ebullient "Happiness is a choice!"...

"There are only two responses to the world, fear or love. Your life depends on which one you choose." Deepak Chopra.

"Fear is the absence of love." Osho

I often hear Republicans complaining about their tax "burden" due to "big government." However, I rarely see them marching down streets (paid...

"God has given you one face and you make yourselves another. You jig and amble, and you lisp, you nickname God's creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance." -- Hamlet, Act III, scene 1

As sentient beings we yearn to be loved unconditionally, and we were raised in a highly...

I have many clients -- mostly artists, musicians, filmmakers and writers -- who come to me with existential questions. For them, I compiled a list of tools for creating a meaningful life:

10. Be a citizen of the world. Know as much as possible about what is going on in...