More Than Four Sides

Category: Philosophy

  • Thinking about death…

    …and other important things. I am running out of time to listen to all the things I have on my smartphone.  Podcasts, music, audiobooks…and then there’s live radio, which is often gripping. With all these options, it’s hard to choose what to listen to. This morning, on my way in to work, I decided, among…

  • The Yoga journey continues…

    I went to my second class of the winter session at Unity Woods yesterday.  Last summer, when I decided to resume yoga classes (and, I hope, develop a regular yoga practice), I enrolled in a level I/II class that is held at 8am at the Bethesda studio.  I thought that 8am on a Sunday morning…

  • My Yoga Life

    I first encountered yoga in the early 1970’s with my mother, watching Lilias, Yoga and You on our local PBS channel (she has a website now, and a series of online classes). She had a wonderful spare studio, and a leotard with a line on the side to emphasize her alignment. My second exposure to…

  • Gone, 34 years…

    I’ve been absent from this virtual space for awhile.  My last post was in October and it was prompted by the book club I belong to (From Left To Write).  And, prior to that, I was posting from Sierra Leone. This month, January, is the month that my father died, 34 years ago.  My daughter was…

  • Familiar suggestions…to Thrive

    I first engaged seriously in meditation when I was about 15years old.  I had the tremendous good fortune to be part of the A-school (the “Alternative” school) as Palo Alto High School, and met an amazing teacher who invited us to participate in an optional “class” – meditation and chanting led on Wednesday mornings in…

  • End of life – no discussion

    Right after I had the encounter I described a few weeks ago, I received an email with terrible news. The email included a scanned hand-written letter – a farewell letter to family and friends. The writer of this letter is someone I have known for most of my life – a vibrant, lively, intelligent person…

  • End-of-life discussion, part two

    I started a post about “End of Life Discussions”, and it’s taken me awhile to get back to it.  Life got busy.  But the thoughts have persisted… So, I was sitting in a clinic exam room with my patient, we’ll call her Eleanor, and her husband, we’ll call him Ted.  And I launched into my pitch:…

  • Discussing end-of-life decisions

    Every now and then, in my work as a physician, I have to broach the topic of impending death with a patient. As a doctor who specializes in carrying mostly for people infected with HIV, that used to be a common discussion, and happily, with very effective medications which we now have available, the discussion…

  • Peeking through the door

    If you’re “friends” with me on goodreads, you’ll know that I’m tearing through a book that I learned about through the podcast “On Being”. The book is Joy Ladin’s “Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders”. To start with the podcast, which aired June 20, and the program was titled “Gender and…

  • Listening…

    I am a regular NPR listener, mostly Morning Edition and All Things Considered, but today I happened to be listening midday, and I caught the program Tell Me More, and, specifically, an interview with Neil Conan, who is apparently retiring from hosting the program Talk of the Nation (TOTN) which I have listened to, on…