Living a healthy, happy life is an art, a balancing act. It also requires practice. The new year is a good time to evaluate and make resolutions. But in fact, anytime is a good time for evaluating where we are at with our life. What do you want to practice this year?

What if we could let go of our burdens instead of having resolutions?

Time for a check on our resolutions, if you have any to begin with. Often resolutions don’t work very well, and they are just a set up for failure. Maybe it is too hard to get a clean fresh start because we drag our burdens of the past with us into the new year.

A week ago I went to the monthly guided meditation and dhamma talk by Ajahn Sona. He comes to Kamloops every month from the Birken Monastery to enlighten us with his wisdom. This time, he talked about serenity and peace, and renunciation. Freeing yourself from burdens is a liberating act. Especially at the beginning of a new year, it can give you a fresh start.

To 'renounce,' in...

It is time to wake up and reclaim our health. Time for empowered self-care.

Life is uncertain. We never really know what lies around the next corner. One thing we can all be certain of, however, is that there will be an end to our physical existence. We just don’t expect it to happen anytime soon, we don’t think or talk about it. In fact, I think we try to bury this certainty under life’s distractions and seem surprised and upset when we are confronted with the consequences of aging and death. Why can’t we be fully aware of our impermanence, embrace it, and feel more alive because of it?

Looking for health in the wrong places

In my professional and personal life, I am constantly confronted with people’s losses. The loss of health, loss of function and abilities, loss of income, loss of identity, to name just a few. Often this loss is not fully acknowledged, not by the person experiencing the loss, not by their family and friends, nor by...