Self Help for Sensitive Souls

Tai Chi is an extraordinary mind-body practice. It builds a solid bridge between your body, mind, and spirit.

Tai Chi, or Taijiquan as it is often called, is a respected member of the oriental internal arts, within a long tradition of martial arts, health, and spiritual disciplines. It is popular, even here in the west, because it is so flexible in its applications and levels of training. Anyone can learn Tai Chi regardless of their current fitness level.

I would like to tell you how magical Tai Chi practice is, but that is something you have to discover for yourself. What I can say is… Continue reading →

I am talking about those deep emotional secrets that you keep, even from yourself. Secrets held from long ago, when your ability to cope was no match for the power of your circumstance.

Events that become dark secrets often happen in childhood. As children, we are more vulnerable. We are less able to protect ourselves, or make wise decisions.

They become dark secrets because: you never fully understood what was going on at the time, you were hurt or traumatized somehow, and you felt that you could not ask for help. Continue reading →

A higher sense of life purpose is unique to higher intelligence.

Other species indigenous to our planet have no need, or ability perhaps, to consider their individual role in the big picture. Their life purpose is determined by their specializations.

It is odd that we humans do not envy other animals for their clarity of life direction, more than we do. Instead, we think of their specialized abilities as an expression of intellectual limitation.

Our attitude is especially odd because we humans are inept at identifying our own life purpose, let alone living it.

We are the most intelligent indigenous species on Earth, but we are the least effective at living to our potential, living in cooperation with the nature that supports us, and thereby ensuring our survival.

Let’s not even go into our unfulfilled potential to create a compassionate and wise society — an accomplishment that is well within our reach. Continue reading →

Have you ever had a deep and secret urge to be totally you — to let the persona drop?

That call to be genuine regardless of consequences feels somehow dangerous. It threatens to overthrow the order. Still, it tugs at you from some poorly lit place in your psyche.

Some of us are not living genuinely. Our lives are not an authentic expression of our true nature.

Why do we do it? We compromise and live false lives, appeasing someone, or some concept, that would not even be part of our life if we were to live genuinely. What sense does that make?

If this describes you in any way, your problem may be rooted in one of your greatest strengths — your sensitivity. Continue reading →

Relationships are a heck of an arrangement aren’t they? They are the easiest things to get into, and the hardest to get out of.

And they are so complex. Have you noticed that? One moment you are crazy in love with this gorgeous person, and in the next, you find yourself cringing every time he lumbers across the room that you so gracefully waltz through, not knowing that his stomping gate is just his way of saying that he hates the way you emotionally castrate him. Continue reading →

Where does the light go when the darkness of depression creeps up around you? How can you see your way out of that darkness when you sense no light within you?

These are questions you ask yourself — if you have the strength to ask — when severe depression strikes.

This is not about feeling blue. Long-term clinical depression can end your life, physically, mentally, or spiritually. It cuts you off at the knees and renders whatever gifts you have powerless. If it is not treated, either professionally or through good self-help, it will increasingly erode your mental health. Continue reading →

A wild animal doesn’t miss much. They are always alert to what is happening within and around them. That attention keeps them healthy, happy, and successful, and we could learn something from them.

A few days ago, I went for a hike in the high dry hills above Lake Okanagan, a beautiful natural area, only minutes from my home.

Despite that fabulous beauty though, after about an hour I found myself physically present in the woods, but consciously absent. I was four decades back in time, reliving fragments of a pivotal memory. Continue reading →