"You're a big-fat-meany!" I overhear my six-year-old yelling at his older brother. Somehow, their peaceful game of chess has deteriorated into a power struggle. My nine-year-old is quick to fire back: "Yeah, we'll you're a big-fat-meany too! And who cares if we never play again!"

They're in the living...

There is a Sufi aphorism that says: "Love the water more and the pitcher less." Muslim scholar Amir Hussain interprets this to mean that "Too often, when people seek to quench their thirst, they focus on the outward form of the container that holds that water rather than on the...

One of the consequences of living in an image-saturated society is that many of us develop a rather superficial, image-oriented relationship with our bodies. Our nearly non-stop exposure to advertisements, TV, films, the internet, and other media trains us to see, understand, and experience our bodies as "moving pictures" --...

In this series of blogs (started January 18th), I've been encouraging you, the reader, to forego the standard New Year's promise to improve your figure and focus instead on practicing peace with your body by treating it with kindness and giving it the care it needs. This suggestion has special...

This is the third in a series of blogs designed to elaborate on my suggestion (originally posted January 18th) that you make a different kind of New Year's resolution in 2010 -- one that replaces the conventional pledge to downsize your figure by going to war with your appetite with...

I am intrigued by how many people responded to my suggestion to stop criticizing your body and start critiquing our culture's devotion to thinness with anxiety that I was somehow (intentionally or not) promoting obesity. So let me be clear: refusing to participate in our culture's obsession with thinness doesn't...

In my last blog, I encouraged you to make a different kind of New Year's resolution. Instead of vowing to do whatever it takes to lose weight and "improve" your figure, how about committing to practicing peace with your body? In other words, why not make a conscious effort to...

Each New Year arrives filled with the possibility of rebirth and renewal. It presents the opportunity to start over again, with a slate so clean it's easy to envision yourself at your very best: happy, healthy, living life to the fullest.

As we examine the reality of ourselves as...