Excerpt from Stop Running From Love

"Distancing" is a big category. Distancers come in many shapes and sizes. They can be single or in long-term couple relationships, gay or straight, women or men, young or old. Here are a few brief glimpses of typical distancers:

Excerpt from My Mother, My Mirror

I recently looked at an afghan my mother helped me crochet in the later years of her life. Her hands were too arthritic to do more than a couple of model stitches at a time, but the pleasure she got out of teaching me seemed to outweigh whatever encumbrance in her joints she experienced. And I got pleasure from letting her teach me. She felt excited when I’d finished it (so did I, after ripping out a particular part one time too many) and was happy when family members could wrap themselves in it to keep warm. Though I’d chosen the afghan’s colors and design, and done most of the work, it was a cocreation in which yarn interwove as did my mother’s and my feelings.

Excerpt from My Mother, My Mirror

When I began to think about mother-daughter relationships, I recalled my seventh-grade lunch table. One of my schoolmates, June, would often say, after slowly unfolding the foil wrapped around her sandwich and peering inside with what seemed like dread, "Damn, my mother gave me shit on rye again." Each time, I would think, "How could she say that about her mother? She must not love her mother. I’d never say that about my mother."

excerpt from The Bipolar Workbook for Teens

A chronic condition like bipolar disorder can be so overwhelming that it seems like it defines who you are. But you are not bipolar disorder, and bipolar disorder isn't you! You're a lot more than just someone with bipolar disorder.

excerpt from The Whole-Body Workbook for Cancer

Some of the best advice I can give anyone is to look for your "blind spots." Even if you're an avid diet and natural-food enthusiast, you may carry around a lot of judgment and attitude, and be unwilling to look at your emotional life.

Excerpt from Yoga for Anxiety

Anxiety causes a shrinking in consciousness and a reduction in your sense of self. Growing in consciousness expands your sense of self; as you learn more about yourself, you discover that there’s much more to you than you ever dreamed possible.

Excerpt from Transformative Yoga

My journey toward the healing effects of yoga began in 1993. At the time, I was seeking relief from emotional stress on both a conscious and an unconscious level. During my first year at college, I was a mess inside. I desperately lacked inner peace, although this wasn’t outwardly apparent.

My parents had recently gone bankrupt, so I was exhausted from working three jobs between high school and college to pay my tuition, and I continued to work part-time while in college. The daily grind was unfulfilling, to say the least. Meanwhile, my twin sister, Alanis Morissette, exploded onto the music scene with her groundbreaking album Jagged Little Pill, which went on to become the highest-selling debut album of all time. With her rapidly mounting success, I felt more emotionally and spiritually lost than ever before and longed to find my own identity and path in life.

I was studying to become an environmental lawyer, a vocation I had an interest in, but one that didn’t fully satisfy me. Deep down, I knew academic study wasn’t going to fulfill my quest for inner peace and happiness. Most of the books I was required to read focused on theory. I needed truth—an unwavering, blatant truth with no smoke and mirrors. In the end, I decided not to complete a degree in environmental law. Ironically, though, the time I spent at college led me in a different and unexpected direction: toward a new sense of spirituality.

Excerpt from Five Good Minutes®

Setting an intention is a way of pointing yourself in a direction, toward an important value or goal. It is a way to identify a quality you wish to nurture in your life.

A skillful intention is more like a friendly guide. Acknowledge from the beginning that important changes take time. You, like everyone else, must make the effort to return repeatedly to the goal you seek.

Excerpt from Five Good Minutes®

You will work with a variety of approaches in your five good minutes. They include the following:

• Mindfulness
• Meditation
• Imagery
• Acting wholeheartedly

Excerpt from Five Good Minutes®

As you experiment and practice with the five good minutes exercises, you will learn to apply consciously your attention, intention, and wholeheartedness. You will see for yourself the power of being present and acting with intention while doing specifically guided exercises. Beyond the exercises, you may even discover more ways to apply these same principles throughout your life.