Are Role Models Useful to Women?
Do women need role models to help them achieve more?
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Read our posts about Soul
Discovering Vedic Meditation
It's early on a Thursday evening, and I'm standing alongside a man I have just met, Will Williams, in his smart Shad Thames apartment. We are in front of a photograph of Guru Dev, one of the masters of the Vedic tradition, and Will has his eyes closed while singing something in Sanskrit and offering the gifts I was encouraged to bring - three pieces of fruit, a bunch of thornless flowers - to the guru. As he sings, I steel a glance at Will. His eyes are closed, and he looks utterly serene.
Will himself does not resemble what we in the west think of as a "guru". He is...
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Musical Meditation: Discovering LifeFlow
A few months ago now, I came across an audio meditation practice called LifeFlow, the conjoining of the two words presumably designed to illustrate the effortless link that should exist within all of us in the ideal world we all wish to inhabit.
"You can allow this scientifically proven audio technology to bring your whole life into perfect harmony and feel peace of mind today!" read the aggressively motivational website blurb, employing, as these things invariably do, a proliferation of exclamation marks in pursuit of blanket persuasion. "YES!" it went on in...
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Culture Tip: Her
A charming film, Her imagines a man falling in love with a computer operating system
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The Top Five Regrets of the Dying
So there I was, on a miserable February morning, watching the rain dribble down the windows of the Guardian offices at Kings Place, searching for stories for the feature pages, when I came upon a website belonging to an Australian palliative nurse who had written a fascinating survey.
Bronnie Ware had asked her dying patients about their greatest regrets in life and had condensed their wisdom down to produce The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. I read it hungrily, for perspective, for comfort, as anyone would.
The features editors weren’t interested in it for...
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Why Writers Need Retreats
Most writers develop the ability to block out noise and a certain amount of chaos. Complete peace and quiet is a rare commodity, so in the interests of getting any work done, this is a skill worth nurturing. What writers don’t always manage is to block out the endless nagging feeling that there is something else they should be doing. And this feeling is invariably made worse when the writer is working from home – as so many writers do. The answer of course, is to leave home for a while and go on a retreat. Preferably a writing retreat.
A jobbing journalist, as I was...
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How to Meditate: Discovering Headspace
In his book Headspace: 10 Minutes Can Make All The Difference, Andy Puddicombe writes: "This is meditation, but not as you know it. There's no chanting, no sitting cross-legged, no need for any particular beliefs… and definitely no gurus."
This, then, is Meditation 2.0, aiming to free the practice from its hippy associations . Puddicombe is mindfulness's first poster boy, a former monk and circus trainer, who boasts good bone structure and an Abercrombie & Fitch dress sense. The New York Times has already suggested he is "doing for meditation what Jamie...
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What I Would Tell the Younger Me
Angela Neustatter contemplates what she would tell her younger self
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What To Do When a Friend Dies
Louise Chunn mourns the loss of an old friend, Guardian journalist Georgina Henry, and wonders what we are supposed to do to mark our sadness when friends die
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Seven Ways to Streamline Your Schedule
Techniques to help stop you being overwhelmed and learn to manage your time, and streamline your schedule
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