Mindfulness

Is it all in my head?

June 23, 2019

If you were to have told me a year and a half ago that my chronic stomach pain was all in my head, I would have picked up the nearest stick and shown you what “all in your head” really feels like.

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Husband: self-regulate!

January 21, 2019

My long-suffering wife has earned that sobriquet. I kvetch. But now she’s read me the riot act: “Husband, you’ve got to self-regulate!”

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Pay mindfulness forward

July 9, 2018

“I’m afraid,” I told my doctor, “that I’ll get to remission from the cancer but still be suffering from chronic pain. How do I cope with that?”

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Please don’t pray for me – here’s what you can do instead

May 7, 2018

“But you’re so healthy. You work out, you’re always hiking, you don’t smoke. And your wife’s a vegan. How could this have happened?”

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Rosh Hashana resolution: breaking my Facebook addiction

September 29, 2017

The period between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur presents an opportunity to reflect on how the last year went and what we could do better in the year to come. In that spirit, I need to come clean: I’ve got an addiction problem … to social media. Sure, we all are hooked on Facebook and […]

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Sleeping pill snafu ends on a restful note

September 10, 2017

I’ve been under enormous pressure lately, exacerbating my chronic insomnia. But never in all my years of sleeping pill-popping did I make this goof.

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Finding your place: New Haggadah makes Passover personal

April 16, 2017

I’m a Haggadah hoarder. Over the years, our family has collected dozens of different Haggadot for the Passover holiday. They range from the highly traditional to the decidedly modern. We have classic Haggadot with commentaries from the Me’am Lo’ez (originally written in Ladino by Rabbi Yaakov Culi in 1730), Rabbi Marcus Lehman of Mainz (late […]

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Transforming FOMO to JOMO on the road

April 7, 2017

FOMO is the “Fear of Missing Out.” The antidote: JOMO – “Joy of Missing Out.” But what’s ROMO? And how do you move from one to the other?

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Texting on Shabbat? Guidelines for the observant Jew

February 19, 2017

The growing phenomenon of Orthodox Jewish teenagers keeping what’s been called “Half Shabbos” burst into the Jewish media several years ago. “Half Shabbos” describes someone who observes all of the Sabbath regulations except one: using his or her smart phone to send text messages. Religious leaders reacted predictably to the revelation of what had been […]

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The blessing of the broken toe

December 8, 2016

Three days before our daughter’s wedding, my wife Jody broke her toe. She dropped a large plata (a hot plate we use to warm food on Shabbat) on her foot. The toe turned purple and I rushed Jody to the nearest Terem emergency center for an X-ray and some advice on proper bandaging. After the […]

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