Click play if you prefer to listen 🙂 (18 minute read) Quitting smoking is a very personal thing. It’s like life––everyone experiences it in their own way. I’d like to say that my way is the right way, but that’s only true for me because my way is my own journey. Even though we share the... Continue Reading →
Click play to hear the audio version. In my blog, What I Learned From a Balinese Healer, I told the story about meeting Cokorda Rai, a well-known healer in Ubud, and Ketut, a young man introduced to us by a friend. While both experiences were insightful the main realization I had was that pain can... Continue Reading →
After being alive four decades we expect to know something. We expect ourselves to be something definitive, easily identified by the world we live in and something that perhaps, has a nice label attached to it. I strived for this for a long time. Even when I thought I wasn't. Even when I renounced my... Continue Reading →
If you'd rather listen, click play below 🙂 Every once in a while I have a day where I feel more connected to the stars, the moon, the cosmos, the things hidden from the plain light of the material world–the "real" one, as most of us call it. I crave going further into the abyss... Continue Reading →
It’s been five years since I experienced a Canadian fall. If not for a certain special somebody I would have been long gone, back to Asia, before autumn equinox. Before the temperature dropped, the leaves started to change, and proper close-toed shoes and jackets became necessary. I usually dread the idea of staying past August... Continue Reading →
Every day I wake up with the usual cloud of mental chaos that threatens to start my day poorly. The residue of a disturbing dream coats my tongue and I start to think about all the things I’m not doing with my life and all the ways I’m not helping people, and the ways I’m... Continue Reading →
“The conundrum of body is the starting point in yoga from which to unravel the mystery of human existence.” - B.K.S. Iyengar In the past year I’ve discovered that yoga is one of the best things I’ve ever done, and continue to do, for myself. What started out as an enjoyable way to stay fit... Continue Reading →
Sixteen years ago I walked into this little house in Toronto's Beaches neighbourhood after meeting my mother-in-law to-be for the first time. She frightened me to be completely honest, because she was confident, outspoken, and the mother of the man I loved. I was quiet, shy, and had an ego about as squash-able as a... Continue Reading →
In Hinduism, when a person dies, a year-long mourning period takes effect in which the family does not participate in any celebrations. On the one-year anniversary, Shradda is recognized with a memorial service, in which closure is brought to formal mourning with traditions similar to many other religions: the reading of scriptures and of course,... Continue Reading →
