Thirty + years ago, the world witnessed Meg Ryan’s perfection of a faked orgasm in Katz’s Deli, we’ve been thinking about great, transformative yeses we’ve written about or experienced.
Read MoreYayoi Kusama Transforms Obsession and Accumulation into Art and Medicine
For decades nintey-year-old artist Yayoi Kusama has embraced the culturally taboo practices of obsession and accumulation, using them as a means of transformation and healing. Her remarkable “art medicine” has been her balm for mental illness.
Read MoreMind-Breath-Nature Mashup Helps Navigate Chaos or Difficulty
Employing wisdom from Pema Chodrun, Dr. Weil and Oliver Sacks, we devised an amazingly effective strategy for navigating upheaval and difficulty
Read MorePrivate Office Rituals That Make Work Better, Deeper, Richer
Accepted for artists, rituals are taboo in the business world even though they can enhance productivity and well-being. Peter Bregman tells how to use them in any setting (once you understand what they really are and do.)
Read MoreOliver Sacks: Nature is a Therapy More Powerful Than Medication
An essay in a posthumously published book by the very wise Oliver Sacks gives a scientist’s view of the healing power of Nature and gardens.
Read MoreHow Do Your Good Ideas Make an Entrance? Knowing Can Help Bring Them to Life
When we stumbled on this image by the great Christoph Niemann at #abstractsunday, we thought: OMG, look at that fabulous doorway. What a vision! How can we get ourselves to imagine more expansively? And that got us thinking about the creative vision and where ideas come from.
Read MoreYoko Ono’s Cleaning Pieces for the First Day of Spring
Yoko Ono’s potent little book Acorn provides conceptual “instructions” that are often focused on healing and personal change. Her four Cleaning Pieces seem like just spring cleaning we could use right now. We’re especially curious about Cleaning Piece III, wondering what it would be like to NOT say anything negative about anybody. Sue Timmons tried the practice and reported its effect…
Read MoreWhat We Do When We’ve Done Everything We Can and Feel We Should Do More (Chris Eldredge, Pat Steir)
When we’ve worked hard taking care of something and feel there is still more we should do, leaving us restless and worried, we employ this 10-word reality check, learned from a psychotherapist friend.
Read MoreIn Memory of W.S Merwin: Life as Spontaneous Poetry
W.S. Merwin, one of the great American poets, passed away on Friday. We found some beauties of poems plus a practice of his that we’re going to try ourselves, in his honor.
Read MoreTrees Ordained as Monks, Forest Bathing and A New Lexicon Helps Heal our Connection to the Natural World
Disconnection from nature is being recognized as the cause of widespread psychological trauma in modern life. A new lexicon and age-old practices are being used to heal it.
Read MoreInstructions from Mary Oliver
Recently, we received an email from Susan Dworski, artist, writer and frequent contributor to Improvised Life. It’s subject line read, simply “Instructions”
Read MoreThomas Merton’s “Small Message of Hope”
Trappist monk and theologian Thomas Merton addressed the difficulties and rewards of being oneself in the modern world, with heartening words on navigating the way through.
Read MorePlease Take Your Shoes Off! What’s Really On the Bottom of Your Shoes
Beyond notions of “better vibe”, there are some very good reasons to impose a “shoes-off policy” at home, including the mighty scary ones we’ve just discovered…
Read MoreHow To Change a Negative Habit
Over the years, I’ve learned that change doesn’t happen over night, but it WILL happen if I practice these five steps…
Read MoreMacfarlane’s Remarkable Twitter Feed: Flashes of Illumination about Landscape and the Human Heart
Though we’re not fans of Twitter, we are enthralled by British writer Robert Macfarlane’s feed for its remarkable ability to connect us to nature, landscape, heart…
Read MoreWhy Napping Is Essential to Well-Being and How To Do It (with Haiku)
Sleep researcher Damien Leger is determined to dispell modern-day guilt about fatigue and napping, because, he says, it is an essential practice, not a luxury of the lazy or entitled…
Read MoreA Quieting Alternative to Meditation (Walt Cotten, Franz Kafka, Mary Oliver)
There is a very old, very simple practice that can do much to restore balance in our ever-on times. Franz Kafka described it perfectly over 100 years ago; Mary Oliver did recently…
Read MoreInstead of Resolutions, a Transformative Record of Surprise
While reflecting on the year gone by, I came across a unique way New Years can transform that is far more powerful than the usual resolutions.
Read MoreFavorite Gifts I Love To Give
Late with my holiday preparations, I’m just wrapping my head around making food gifts as well as the few gifts I buy. Here’s are favorites that you still have time to order.
Read MoreLollypop Menorah Near Vegas is a Lesson in Free Association (Gary Snyder, Freud)
Artist Ugo Rondinone’s Seven Magic Mountains, fluorescently-painted 32-foot-high totems in the desert outside Vegas, reveal the poetry of free association…
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