Your Authentic Life: Why it’s Important to Practice Vulnerability even if (maybe especially if) it Scares You
My prior blog post suggested that facing ourselves honestly and showing up vulnerably with others are necessary for any of the nine Enneagram types to move toward health. “Yeah, but…” most of us immediately think. It used to be physically painful for me - as an “8” on...
Your Authentic Life: What’s Your Enneagram Health Level?
A few days ago, I shared some of the unhealthy aspects of my Enneagram type, the “8.” If you want to know what your Enneagram type is, you can take a very brief test here. We’ve all experienced unhealthy levels of our type, but none of us needs to stay stuck there. In...
Your Authentic Life: What Type Are You on the Enneagram?
I’m an “8” on the Enneagram The powerful, dominating type. The type everyone loves to hate. At an Enneagram retreat a few years ago, we were put into groups according to our type. Each group had the opportunity to sit in the middle of a circle and communicate to the...
Mindful Self-Care: On Church Hunting and Speed Dating
Yesterday Ed and I started our search for a church community in Eugene, a town we recently moved to. Based on a web search, we had a list of five spiritual groups that looked potentially interesting. Picking the first one on the list, we headed for their 10:30 Sunday...
China Tai Chi Tour
Our dear tai chi master, Dr. Paul Lam, and his partner Hazel invited us to join them as part of a small group on a two-week tai chi workshop/tour of China. Dr. Lam said he designed the trip to be “fun and serious, leisurely and exciting, like the yin and yang of tai...
Your Authentic Life: A Husband and a Gentleman
How do you define a ‘gentleman’? We recently returned from our one-month cruise up the coast of Brazil and into the Amazon. I wrote and published a daily travel blog, which often described the triumphs and foibles we observed in our fellow passengers and ourselves. I...
Final Travel Blog #5
Travel Blog #5 March 13 – 17 March 13 Today we cruised along the Amazon, our main reason for embarking on this remarkable journey. Amazonia, the world’s largest tropical rain forest, covers an area of 5.5 million square kilometers. It generates more than 20 percent of...
Travel Blog #4
TRAVEL BLOG 4 March 8 – 12 March 8: Natal Natal, which in Portuguese means Christmas, is the capital and largest city of the state of Río Grande do Norte, very close to the eastern-most tip of Brazil. I’m attaching a photo of our itinerary to illustrate Natal’s...
Travel Blog #3
TRAVEL BLOG 3 March 4 – 8 Armaçao dos Búzios & Salvador da Bahia Armaçao dos Búzios At 7:00 a.m., the ship sailed into Búzios, a vacation destination nestled into the hills of a peninsula just northeast of Rio de Janeiro. From our ship, it resembled an upscale...
Travel Blog 2
TRAVEL BLOG 2 February 27 – March 3 February 28 - March 1: Two Days at Sea Our first day at sea began with breakfast served in our stateroom. Our “stewardess” is Sophia from the Republic of Georgia (names and locations have been changed to protect the innocent). She...