One of the greatest gifts we can give to our children is to be less reactive to their emotionality.

It’s simple, you don’t fight fire with fire.

You use water.

It’s our job as parents to do the “inner work” on ourselves so that we can remain calm when our kids are dealing with the storms of emotions that are a natural part of their growth and evolution.

It’s not personal to you, so stop taking it that way.

Instead practice intentionally calming your nervous system and becoming less reactive to your own, thoughts and physical sensations…

through conscious breathing and self-lead meditation.

Personal example, just the other day I was sitting in my morning meditation and my body began to sweat profusely.

It happens these days every so often, as I’m going through a detox for mold toxicity.

Undeniably my attention shifted to it.

And part of me was very uncomfortable…

wanting to stop meditating and get up.

But instead I sat with it....

When in doubt, laugh it out

My day didn’t start out with laughter, but I chose to bring it to the day. Let me explain. When I woke up this morning, my mind was whirling, lots of things on the to do list.

Normally before I get into the list, I make sure to sit in meditation grounding myself in gratitude. But for some reason today, I didn’t.

I dove right into the “to dos”. Not a good idea I might add. As it would happen, the first thing on the list (make breakfast) was something that turned out to cause me a great deal of frustration.

In my efforts to prepare and cook pancakes for us, I ended up burning the bottom of the batter bowl, charring the first pancake, and having a bit of hot grease spit on me. I felt the thought creep into my head...”it’s just going to be one of those days”.

But then it happened...I paused and found myself say aloud, “No it’s not”. As I held Skye in my arms, I took a few deep breaths a brought...

It seems these days, in our high-tech, low-touch society the art of a "proper" hug has been lost. More often than not, people see/feel themselves as so separate from others...so disconnected. When they hug, if they hug at all, it is just a cold, almost societally imposed way of greeting each other.

Rather, there can be such a healing force that is passed from loving, caring human touch. It is after all, a transfer of energy from one living being to another...almost an acknowledgment that "I see you"...(to steal a line from Avatar). That is... to see beyond our differences, our separateness and through this "touch" we acknowledge in the other, that at our core, it is from love that we all have come and it is to love that we all shall return.

I recently learned that within the Buddhist faith/tradition there is a practice called "Hug Meditation". When one hugs another, the hug is sustained for a period of 3 full inhales and exhales. During that time, you hold the person close...close...

One of the fondest memories I have of my childhood, comes from my bedtime ritual growing up on Hempstead Rd in Toledo, Ohio.

For whatever reason, for most of my life I've been a nervous wreck. Whether it was taking a test in school, trying to summon up the courage to ask a girl out, playing a sporting event or simply going about my day, I couldn't calm my mind.

In fact, my nerves were the reason I quit playing baseball when I was in 5th grade. I was the pitcher for my team but before every game I would get super sick to my stomach and be saddled with anxiety. It got to the point that I couldn't take it anymore and stopped playing. As an aside, pretty sad that I did, because I was pretty darn good. Oh well...

Having said that, there was one thing I did as I was falling asleep at night that soothed my mind and made me feel like it was all going to be ok. My mom would come in and turn on the radio to a program called "Music From The Hearts Of Space".

It was the most calming, relaxing...