Hoping a situation will change keeps you at a distance from your true feelings-sadness, anger, fear. Each of these feelings is best appreciated up close. Feel them deeply, and they will cease to bother you. Hope they'll go away, and they'll bother you all day.

Many healings of other physical troubles have occurred in my clients after they started to integrate breathing practices into their lives. There is a simple but encompassing reason that may explain this. The human body is designed to discharge 70% of its toxins through breathing. Only a small percentage of toxins are discharged through sweat, defecation and urination. If your breathing is not operating at peak efficiency, you are not ridding yourself of toxins properly.

It is not love that is to blame. But each of us has resistance to the very love we desire. We also have resistance to the space and independence we need. So we go back and forth, not letting ourselves have one or the other. It all boils down to this: Are you willing to have your relationships be a pathway to fully revealing yourself and your potential? If you answer is Yes, real intimacy can be yours on a daily basis.

Rule Number One is this: If you’re open to learning, you get your life-lessons delivered as gently as the tickle of a feather. But if you’re defensive, if you stubbornly persist in being right instead of learning the lesson at hand, if you stop paying attention to the tickles, the nudges, the clues—boom! Sledgehammer.

There's no such thing as a minor lapse of awareness. You're either present with what is--right here, right now--or you're someplace else.

The goal in life is not to attain some imaginary ideal; it is to find and fully use our own gifts.

Welcome the back talk, because it's completely natural and normal. It's actually a sign that the new idea you've planted in your mind is taking root.