Early this week, I was flipping through Yoga Journal and found an article from the magazine’s archives, written by Keith Kachtick, about impermanence. It was written in 2008; in it, Kachtick recalls being on a trip to Miami, shell-shocked by the realization that his marriage was ending. Ambling through South Beach by himself, he stumbled on an exhibition of Tibetan art and culture that featured six Buddhist lamas completing a sand mandala in public. “[I]t was the first moment of genuine ease I’d…

Just yesterday afternoon, I stumbled on this piece of photojournalism. It describes what refugee families in the Diffa region of Niger are eating with the few food staples they can obtain. Buzzfeed reports, Nearly one in five people are victims of food insecurity in landlocked Niger, one of the poorest in the world. The reasons are both man-made and natural. The vast, largely agrarian country experiences a rainy season for only two months each year — and, with climate change causing havoc in…

Earlier this week, I mentioned that I’d been a little out of sorts. “Crabby” is actually the word I used to describe it to a friend, which in this case meant irritable, negative, and a little judgy. I’ve learned that these qualities tend to gather around me when I’m actually feeling more vulnerable things at the core: insecurity, perhaps, or vulnerability, or worry. I retreat to a bulwark of negativity to help defend myself against uncertainty and self-doubt. Not the best strategy. I…

You may have heard that Google Maps just pulled an experimental feature that told users how many calories they’d burn if they walked to a destination instead of driving. The feature was intended to promote exercise and greater awareness of energy balance, but pushback from eating disorder treatment professionals—as well as troubled consumers—turned the tide. The app not only showed the caloric deficits associated with walking, but it also framed these deficits in terms of food: for example, it would inform users that…

When people ask me why I’m vegan, the simplest answer I can give—and the one that I most often do give these days—is that veganism is my practice and expression of ahimsa. Ahimsa is an animating principle in several Eastern religions, including Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Sometimes it’s translated as nonviolence, sometimes as “doing no harm.” It’s often simply translated to “compassion.” Compassion is a central value in my life, something I aspire to access and practice even when it isn’t easy. Lately…

This week in my Strategies for Nutrition Education class, we spent a little time discussing Self Determination Theory. It’s a behavioral theory that posits three essential conditions of a person’s motivation, engagement, persistence, and creativity: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy refers to feelings of freedom and self-governance, competence to feelings of mastery, and relatedness to feeling connected and engaged with others. The more these conditions are evoked, the theory goes, the better the chances an individual will have of successfully implementing and maintaining…

Happy October! I feel as though I’m constantly making remarks in these posts about how quickly time is flying, so I should probably just accept that pace as the nature of things. But, seriously: time is flying. I can’t believe September has already come and gone. In looking back on this month, I can definitely see that some of the overwhelm I was feeling this week is due to my having been a lot more open and social than I have been in…