January seems to be a very popular time for new promises, plans, and resolutions. With the new beginning of the year, many people are prompted to make it a personal new beginning as well. However, even though making resolutions is still a very popular practice among us, many have begun to think of it as just another broken promise or failing ideal, and the statistics back up this claim with an estimated less than 10% of all resolutions ever being realized!  I must admit that this grim forecast of realized resolutions and my own experiences have caused me to fall out of love with this once very-important-to-me, annual ritual. Perhaps you can relate. Someone recently asked me if I had set my resolutions yet for 2010. This question was fo...

In a discussion with my yoga teacher yesterday, we got onto the subject of habits and how when we get too deeply ingrained in them, we lose presence. I never really thought about it that way before. In fact, as a person who trains in martial arts, we always teach about developing automatic physical responses to threats in self-defense situations. We talk a lot about self-control becoming self-mastery when you no longer have to force yourself to react in a certain way--it just comes naturally. But as I talked with my teacher yesterday, he brought up an interesting point of how many people go throughout the whole day in that state of automatic reaction. We drive to work and cannot really even recall the act of driving there--it occurred...

New Years Resolutions....Hmmmmm. I have to wonder if that is a negative or a positive idea! Listening to people worry due to the pressure of the New Year's Resolution tradition.....has definitely made me stop and wonder. These are just a few things that I have heard repeatedly from others... "I seem to always struggle around New Years....Did I get ANYTHING accomplished this year?.....Am I thinner this year?.....Does my husband love me more this year?....What will I be like next year at this time?....Am I a better person this year?....I just try to remember .... "Would I judge a friend's year the way I judge my own.....and would I be this hard on someone I loved?"" Another New Years dilemma ..... do I even appreciate the chan...