Inspiration Faith & Prayer Health & Wellness Entertainment Love & Family
Newsletters Special Offers

Fresh Living

Foodie Friday is upon us, and this week’s post is about an early summer joy that is as fleeting as it is delightful.  I speak of the pungent, powerful, twisty, green, and woefully short-lived garlic scape. Yesterday at my town’s farmer’s market, I bought a squiggly handful of the wild, wispy stuff, not knowing what…

“Apologizing–a very desperate habit–one that is rarely cured.  Apology is only egotism wrong side out.”  – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Professor at the Breakfast-Table My name is Valerie and I’m an apology addict. Hello, Valerie. I had no idea how bad it was. On Wednesday I posted on my one-week experiment in not apologizing…

This weekend, summer will officially begin.  Welcome, welcome!  When summer starts, I always think of this quote from Albert Camus: “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” How will your summer be invincible? 

I just listened to Ray Anderson (founder of the billion dollar carpet company Interface Global) talk at LOHAS. The entrepreneur calls himself a “radical industrialist” and is my new hero–and already lots of other people’s hero. Among so many other things he has done to make his company as eco as possible way before it…

I can’t decide how exactly to react to this Boston Globe article about how some fitness buffs are, because of skin cancer fears, keeping their workouts indoors this spring and summer. On one hand, I get it.  Members of my family have had melanomas (thank God, successfully) removed, and my freckle-prone coloring has turned me…

I’m at the LOHAS conference in Boulder, a green gathering I posted on the other day. And right now, I’m in a session where they’re talking about the intricacies of the LOHAS demographic–who buys green, organic, socially responsible, and natural products–a $50 million industry. In the midst of the numbers, the speaker, Steve French of…

You know the old anxiety management technique where you picture your fear as a big scary monster and then picture it doing something silly?  Enter this video, which puts simple, ridiculous, funny “hey,” “hi,” and “hello” into the mouths of scary Jurassic Park dinosaurs.  My favorite is the clip where they’re running across the field,…

At my weekly gentle Iyengar class (taught by the fabulous Liz Owen), we get beautiful, contemplative gems during the meditation periods at the beginning and end of class.  One week it might be a visualization of our vertebrae as shining pearls of energy, suspended inside our bodies in perfect alignment.  Another week it might be…

On the first day of every month I try to say “rabbit rabbit” first thing–an old wive’s tale says it’s supposed to bring good luck. Other mornings I try to catch myself when the first words out of my mouth want to be something cranky like, “Uhg, I’m so tired.” I try and replace them…

In a terrific yoga class last night in Boulder, Colorado, the teacher talked about taking leaps–moving into the next level of our “greatness,” expanding how we share our gifts with the world. It was funny, I immediately wished I could tape record this talk for a friend who’s grappling with exactly this–how to find and…
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners