In the early 1980s, an American businessman and a Chilean-born neuroscientist had a similar dream - to develop an ongoing conversation between Western scientists and the Dalai Lama about the relationship between our minds and our lives. A Buddhist teacher heard about these parallel initiatives and invited the two men...

This morning, while surfing the Internet, I followed a tweet to a Japanese baseball team's new logo.

The slogan Focus on this play, this moment!! has been met with sniggers from baseball fans that, besides being put off by the double exclamation...

Family holidays are a big deal for me, especially the food. Eating ham on Easter, plum pudding on Christmas and Eskimo pies on the Fourth of July is the stuff of my childhood memories. When I got married I began to celebrate Jewish holidays too, and now my enthusiasm for...

Have you ever had a funny feeling that something's not right, but you can't figure out what it is? Maybe it's a tight feeling in your chest, or a sinking feeling in your stomach. These gut feelings, or intuitions, tend to be a fairly reliable indication that there is something...

Why would anyone who teaches mindful awareness to kids and families tweet? Isn't Twitter the height of mindlessness embodied in an endless stream of random and reactive virtual chatter known as tweets? By churning up mental noise, rather than quieting it down, isn't Twitter the opposite of mindfulness?

Just...

Okay, so how cool is it that the Obamas are tearing up 1,100 square feet of the White House lawn to plant a kitchen garden? I can't wait to see the pictures of Michelle, Barack, and their kids tending the White House garden splashed on the front pages of newspapers...

I like a good cliché. If I had a quarter for every time someone in my family rolled his or her eyes when I used a cliché I'd be a rich woman. Oops, there I go again. (Is "there I go again" another cliché?) So when Sarah Palin talks about...

Obama made one of his now trademark speeches on Wednesday, throwing down the gauntlet on high-stakes testing with: "Accountability does not need to come at the expense of a well-rounded education."

In stark contrast to McCain's continued embrace of No Child Left Behind, and the nightmarish wave of...

You may be surprised that a middle-aged mom is writing a post advocating the legalization of prostitution. Here's why. A short while ago, news got out that the DC Madam killed herself while visiting her mother in Florida: a death that was really unnecessary.

For those who haven't followed...

We've heard a great deal this week about the Dalai Lama's 'middle way' political solution to the violence in his homeland. This political 'middle way' calls for Tibetan autonomy within China. But there is another middle way that has dominated the headlines this week. Separated by 40 years and...

Clinton advisor Geraldine Ferraro, the first and only woman to have been a major party VP candidate in a presidential election, views herself as a victim of racism. Yesterday she said, "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white." Hillary Clinton, a Senator...

While not a celebrity, when it comes to feminist credentials I take a back seat to no one. As a teenager in the 1970s, I was on a road crew and drove a truck for the public works department in the village of Paw Paw, Michigan. We took black electricians'...

My husband and I are staying at a beautiful beach resort where I will be speaking to a group of educators and parents this morning. I generally wake up early to read and write. But this morning, I am sitting in a tiny hotel bathroom with the door shut tight...

I was sitting at the dinner table and told my family I would be busy tonight writing a piece on National Mentoring Month. My daughter said, "Cool, did you know last month was National Watermelon Eating Month?" My husband joined in, "Why don't you write about mentoring a watermelon eater?"...

A friend recently voiced the concern that those who advocate teaching mindfulness to children are creating a market for something that does not yet exist. Despite good intentions, the implication was that we are jumping the gun. Why? because there is research on mindfulness with adults and teens but no...

I have always believed in new beginnings. Growing up in a small Midwestern town I once heard a visiting minister describe each day as an opportunity for a resurrection. His statement caused quite a stir in our church but it made a lot of sense to me. In college, I...

You can learn a lot about relationships by paying attention to other people's breathing. Breath awareness is a time-tested way of training attention, and most agree that tuning into their own breath is useful. But it is less well known that you might glean valuable information about others by paying...

This week, the FDA issued a statement that some cases of death and dangerous side effects have been reported "in association with therapeutic doses" of ADHD drugs. "The few controlled clinical studies of longer term drug treatment of ADHD provided little information on cardiovascular risks," the FDA...