Film as Activism in Understanding Mental Health May is Mental Health Awareness Month. On May 10, filmmaker Jacqui Blue released her second documentary, I Chose Life: Stories of Suicide & Survival. This followed a virtual premiere screening event on the 7th. Jacqui Blue felt it was important to address suicide by covering multiple aspects of [...]
Let’s face it. We could all use a little more beauty, inspiration, and SURPRISE in our lives (ok, good surprises that is). That’s what The (not so) Little Book of Surprises is. In a world flooded with self-help manuals, it’s refreshing to find a book that is so full of wisdom. A book that doesn’t [...]
The Ego gets a lot of flack. People love to hate on it. It’s got more contracts out on it then Joey from the neighborhood. Everyone wants to kill their Ego and everyone wants to be Enlightened, because that’s apparently what happens when you finally put the bullet between the eyes of the Ego. It [...]
Buddhist Economics author Clair Brown Let’s face it. Most of us are still reeling from the 2016 election. Dazed and confused, we are floundering about posting furiously on our social feeds about all the craziness that is happening around us. Desperately hoping this is all just a bad dream we will soon wake [...]
I’ve spent some time naked in a hot tub with a few men in my life, but I have to admit, one of the most interesting of those men was Barnet Bain. Ok, the hot tub was at Esalen and we weren’t alone (that’s how it rolls in a hot tub at Esalen.) Barnet was [...]
Zhena Muzyka shares her story rising from a single mother to entrepreneur, author, and publisher. When I first met Zhena, I have to be honest, I was intimidated and a bit jealous. Here was a woman who had everything I wanted and everything “my lizard brain” (as she calls it) was programmed to resent. But [...]
Life Unscripted: Daniel Ladinsky sits down with Betsy Chasse to talk about Rumi, Hafiz, and his journey as a book author I was first introduced to the Sufi poet Hafiz in a yoga class. I can’t even remember to poem the teacher read, but it spoke to me, and I immediately sought out this Hafiz [...]
Betsy Chasse Reflects on her Nightstand Reading My nightstand is a sacred place to me. It hold my favorite picture of my kids (Max and Elora), my favorite scented candle (jasmine), the perfect reading lamp, and of course a pile of books. My nightstand is often the last thing I see at night as well [...]
Consciousness takes top billing on the Cinema Marquee When we think about the previous year in review from the perspective of films focused on the spiritual themes, it feels as though 2014 was the year Conscious Cinema expanded beyond its usual niche. By the way, Conscious Cinema is not my term, it’s a phrase coined [...]