“When You’re A Big Star, Will You Miss The Earth” It was the late 90’s, before Spotify and iTunes, Napster and MP3s. Albums didn’t drop onto streaming services and immediately upload onto our phones. Corporate-run radio stations dictated who heard what, when. Rebellious youth tried to fight the system. Grunge bands sued the conglomerate Ticketmaster [...]
When the global pandemic halted the whirling pace of the modern world, the populace turned its focus to the sanctity of life, the importance of health, and connectedness of all beings. These are ideals that Sharon Gannon has been living and teaching for four decades. Gannon and partner David Life are students of Shri Brahmananda [...]
Michael Imperioli. Jim Spellman, Getty Images It’s another precarious pandemic morning. Michael Imperioli materializes on the Zoom screen. He leads the group in prayer, purifying breaths and a sitting meditation. He reads aloud long passages by the Tibetan Buddhist Lama, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Within one of them it states, “For such a [...]
Elected into office in 2002, Congressman Tim Ryan has been exemplifying the qualities of a Spiritual Warrior for the past 20 years. The outspoken meditator who is for working families and choice, counts farmers and vegans among his closest friends. He’s brought emotional tools to the toughest vets, and inspired even his most conservative colleagues [...]
A Teacher's Journey: Sri Dharma Mittra When we consider the story of how noted yoga teacher Sri Dharma Mittra became known as the teacher's teacher, we would do well to begin at the beginning. Sri Dharma Mittra was born in the remote village of Pirapora, Brazil in 1939. One of five children, he and his [...]
Tina and Ikettes performing (January 1976). Photograph Courtney of Rhonda Graam/HBO An Intimate Story of an Icon...and her Chanting Practice You may think you know something about the life of Tina Turner. She is an icon, an entertainer, a survivor….and a woman who has practiced the art of chanting for transformation. Her story [...]
Intro: Remembering 911 I grew up in suburban New Jersey on the commuter line into New York City. I worked my way through school as a junior account executive for a brokerage firm on Wall Street during the dot com boom of the late '90s and early '00s. Back then, the streets of lower Manhattan seemed to [...]
Satsang: Gathering Musical Community Satsang; it means community, it means to gather. And as Drew McManus, lead singer of the band of the same name shares, it means, “In the company of truth.” This is something McManus has been seeking in himself and the world around him for as long as he can remember. Drew [...]
Darrell Hammond Doing Stand Up Comedy: from the film Cracked Up Cracked Up Now Streaming on Netflix In September 2019, Santa Monica’s second street was lined with classic rocks stars, counterculture icons, environmental warriors, music industry hit-makers, best-selling authors, trauma therapists, yoga teachers, and more. The colorful crowd lined up to get into [...]
David Nichtern photo by Riley Smoller Creativity, Spirituality & Making a Buck In Buddhism everything has a place—a tidy system of labeling each element of the human experience (and beyond). That includes thoughts, senses, emotions, and stages of life (and death). It’s no surprise that the very first speech the Buddha gave included [...]