I always knew that instinctively, but I recently learned the science behind it, which makes me want to stand up on a rooftop and shout, love everybody and you’ll be cured!!!!

Could it really be that simple? Sorta, yeah.

Check it…when we fall in love or when we feel really close and loving and connected and accepted by someone, our bodies release certain chemicals. Oxytocin, dopamine, and endorphins, among other juicy feel-good chemicals, go racing around our bloodstream, making us feel awesome.

But here’s what’s super cool…when scientists place a few cells in a Petri dish and then douse it with those chemicals of love, the cells thrive! This does NOT occur with the control cells hanging out in the Petri dish next door, who were not the lucky recipients of the love chemicals.

Love makes cells thrive + we are made up of trillions of cells = love makes us thrive. It really is that simple. Really!

Hearing about this study reminded me of an interview where a prolific author and researcher was talking about his 25 years of research into the nature of consciousness. The interviewer asked him what he learned from his extensive studies and he said something to the effect of, “Well, I’m sorta embarrassed to say that after 25 years of research, I can boil it down to one sentence: Be kind to each other.”

Are we there yet?

One of the themes I notice with my coaching clients (and something I’ve also done a lot of) is getting stuck in destination consciousness. In other words, we want to stay positive and hopeful all the time, but, like everyone, we have good days and bad days. And on those bad days, we feel bad we’re not having a good day! We say things to ourselves like, “I’ll never get better,” or “Why aren’t all my efforts paying off?” or “I’m not good enough” or “Clearly I must be doing something wrong because I’m having a bad day and I’m symptomatic and I can’t think a single positive thought today.”

We think that in order to be “doing it right” we must be positive all the time, and when we’re not, we emotionally beat ourselves up. But this is a trap, and it’s why I’m writing this post. When we notice that our bruises were dealt by our own hands, that’s when it’s time to remember those cells in the Petri dish! Those cells thrived because they were doused in love, not self-flagellation.

So when you catch yourself going down that oft-treaded path of negativity and self-loathing, remind yourself that those thoughts and feelings are the opposite of a healing environment. If you want to heal, think LOVING thoughts. Douse your own cells in love! Accept yourself for exactly who you are in this moment.

Go on, you have my permission. Accept your circumstances. Accept that you feel negative. Embrace it. Forgive yourself for being human. Let go of needing things to be any way other than exactly as they are.

When you do this, you are creating a release in your system. You are creating the space for love to come rushing back in with all its miraculous benefits and healing powers. There is nothing you have to do or learn or be or have to deserve the full, blissful embrace of the universe’s love. All that is required is letting go.

Make the space for love in your body and your mind and your spirit today. Because where love goes, things heal.

I moved into this apartment here in Austin just one year ago. The day I moved in, I placed my furniture where I thought it belonged and that was where it remained. I reveled in my new space and the way I had chosen to place everything to best fit my needs and taste.

But as the year progressed, something interesting happened. Fairly quickly, I began to relate to my furniture as if it were immovable. I took for granted that it was where it was because I had placed it there, and therefore I had the power to move it. My environment had become so familiar that I forgot that I had choice. I developed amnesia for my own power to create and recreate my life.

But when I began selling my furniture and the major pieces that had defined my space began to disappear, a remarkable thing happened – my experience of my apartment completely changed. Breath and hope and space and fresh air swept in. Everything was new and different. I remembered my power. The light of possibility emerged.

Letting go of the past

Still, there was also an acute feeling of loss each time I watched a piece of my furniture get carried out the door. After all, many of those items had been with me for years already. That bookcase used to be in my bedroom in my former house and I stared at it every day from my bed, where I cried about being sick and my mom dying and my engagement falling apart.

The corner of that sofa table was where my daughter got the scar by her eye one evening when she was playing too close to it. Those wooden square shelves had been with me since 2007 – my ex-boyfriend put them together in our house in New York and my daughter wrote on them with markers when she was four. Then there was the patio set, where I kissed the man I loved, and then later another man I loved, and read books that made me feel inspired, and cuddled with my daughter on Saturday mornings, and basked in the sunshine to keep me alive on those days when I was so sick and depressed I wanted to die.

Many of those memories weren’t even good, and I have been surprised by the intensity of my attachment to the inanimate objects that held them. Still, the loss feels real and it hurts and is unexpected. But what is the thing I am losing?

I think, at its simplest, it is this: I am losing certainty. My attachment isn’t to the furniture – it’s to an illusion of safety and security built upon the familiarity of those objects. So now, as I sell off each item, I must exist in the furniture-less, uncertain, uncomfortable, messy, groundless middle between owning my old stuff and eventually owning new stuff, between a life here in Austin, and a life soon-to-be in California.

At this moment, I own next-to-no stuff – a place of sheer terror and utter liberation, depending on my mood.

It’s no different than ending a relationship or deciding to move to a new state or country or changing the lifestyle habits that we know have been keeping us sick. We know we need to let go of the old thing, the familiar, comfortable thing, but we don’t know yet what awaits us in the new, what it looks or feels like.

We have all been here – engaged in that slow-motion leap from one building to the other, determined not to look down, kept afloat by the winds of dread and elation and the echo of that insistent question: Will I make it to the other side alive?

When the people in our inner circle don’t understand our suffering, we may feel isolated, frustrated, misunderstood, and painfully, acutely alone as a result. Since we’re all friends here, I’ll just put it frankly: It stinks.

I recently spent some time with a friend who has fibromyalgia, a chronic illness that causes long-term, widespread pain and tenderness throughout the body. She works a full-time corporate job during the week, and on the weekends she works with her husband in their jointly owned photography studio. She was burnt out, stressed, exhausted, symptomatic, and, as she put it, “at the end of her rope.”

But when she tells her husband she needs the weekends to relax and unwind and take care of herself, he accuses her of not being supportive of him and their business. He looks at her, and from the outside, she appears to be fine. She’s not sneezing. She’s not coughing. She’s not profusely sweating. She’s not fainting. She’s not limping. She looks fine.

But she’s not fine. And she needs him to understand. But he doesn’t understand.

Compassion is the Solution

This is just one specific scenario but it illustrates a common conundrum for people living with chronic illness. However, in order for us to communicate our frustration and isolation in a healthy, productive manner, it’s important that we first have compassion for the perspective of the people close to us.

In my friend’s case, her husband has been healthy his entire life, with the exception of a minor cold once every few years. He has had no firsthand experience of living in a body that doesn’t work the way he wants it to. He’s very fortunate. And for this, she needs to have compassion. Yes, compassion.

Of course, you might be saying, “Oh, poor healthy guy! Yeah, I really feel for ya buddy! Geez! As if!” I am reminded of a time in my last relationship when my boyfriend had gotten sick with a stomach virus. He lied in bed for days, watching movies and moping and feeling sorry for himself. I struggled to find my compassion, but all that kept coming up instead was, “Look at you, falling apart with a little stomach virus, you big baby!”

But if we want to be understood, we have to be willing to understand others too. It’s not my friend’s husband’s fault that he hasn’t had the experience of ill health, and therefore it’s not his fault that he has trouble relating to his wife’s struggle and intuiting what she needs.

Engage in Loving Communication

When we focus on compassion, it allows us to put down our feelings of being offended and hurt. It lets us realize the folly of righteously declaring that the other person should get it, and instead it frees us up to focus on communicating clearly and lovingly.

My friend kept saying things like, “I just need him to understand that I’m not feeling well.” But since he couldn’t understand, they were stuck, and frustration was mounting on both sides, creating a serious fissure in their marriage.

I suggested that instead of trying to get him to understand how she feels, it might be more useful to tell him clearly and lovingly what she needs him to do. He may not understand, “I have pain all over my body,” or “I”m too tired to do anything, even though I just got up an hour ago,” but he could understand, “I am unable to work on Saturdays anymore and I need you to find someone else to replace me.”

This is a clear directive. He can work with that. But most importantly, in order for this type of dialogue to occur, it first requires her to take responsibility for identifying what she needs and clearly communicating it, without drama, accusation, or defensiveness.

The Food Poisoning Revelation

Before I was diagnosed with MS, I went through a period of several years after college where I was bedridden for months at a time, a slave to my fatigue and not knowing the cause. My best friend at the time often got angry with me for making and then breaking plans. I tried to explain it to her, but I could barely explain it to myself. I didn’t know what was happening with me.

It reached a climax one day when she was performing in a play in the city and I wasn’t able to go because I was sick. What was this mysterious sickness I kept complaining about, anyway?! I didn’t even have a name for it! She raged at me, at what she thought was my insensitivity and selfishness and laziness. We didn’t speak for months.

Then one day she called me, humbled, apologizing profusely. She had gotten food poisoning from a falafel sandwich she had purchased from a street vendor in the city and she had just spent several days puking and so fatigued she couldn’t get out of bed. She said, “Oh my gosh, Karen, is this what you go through? Is this what it’s like for you?” She said, “I felt so awful these last few days! I get it now. I’m so sorry I didn’t understand.”

Sometimes the only way we can truly understand another’s suffering is when we experience something similar. And even then, everyone’s suffering is different, everyone’s pain is relative.

My friend’s realization made me feel understood and loved by her in a way I never had, and it did heal the wound that had developed between us as a result. But this can’t always be the case, and we certainly don’t wish MS or any other illness on the people we love.

So What Do We Do?

Short of giving all our loved ones food poisoning and hoping they have a revelation, what can we do? The answer is we can have compassion for their experience. We can notice if we feel resentful toward them because they don’t have the same struggles. We can notice if we resent their lack of understanding. And then we can feel compassion for them, for our own pain and isolation, and for the entirety of our very human situation.

And finally, we can ask ourselves what we need and communicate clearly and lovingly how we’d like them to support us. And thank them lovingly and sincerely when they do.

I click once and it thinks I clicked twice, opening files and programs I am not intending to open. I try to move my cursor to a word and instead it highlights entire portions of text. Sometimes I click and instead of the wrong thing happening, nothing happens. I click again and again, still nothing. Rage!!!

Then sometimes the pointer randomly disappears from the screen, filling me with unexpected existential terror;  my mouse is plugged into my keyboard, yet it has seemingly ceased to exist!

My Mouse is Me. My Mouse is You.

A new computer mouse is cheap. Under $20 for a basic model. So you might be wondering why I’d be torturing myself with one that is clearly broken? Well, it’s because my mouse is me. My mouse is you. My mouse is anyone living with an illness, anyone living with the maddening frustration of a body that does not do what they tell it to do.

I know I could just go out and buy a new one, but I am stopped by something potent and persistent inside me that says, Wait. Be still. Look. You have something to learn here.

Sometimes, the frustration with my own faulty body can be so intense that all I can feel is the rage. But with the mouse, because it is outside of me, because there is some distance between me and it, I feel a surprising compassion for it too. It did not ask to be broken. It is doing the best it can. It is struggling just to carry on, like all of us.

I zoom out and hover above myself, a witness to my wild and unpredictable fluctuation between compassion and rage. Between love and the withholding of love, which can also be simply called judgment.

Love What is Broken

I know I can purchase a new mouse. But I can’t purchase a new body. So maybe the value and the gift here is to learn how to love even my broken mouse. To love even my rage for my broken mouse. To love my left eye, even when it won’t focus properly. To love my left leg even when it is numb and my hands even when they tingle and my body even when I cannot peel it off the bed.

As the wise Pema Chodron writes, “If we want there to be peace in the world, we have to be brave enough to soften what is rigid in our hearts, to find the soft spot and stay with it. We have to have that kind of courage and take that kind of responsibility. That’s the true practice of peace.”

Where is the soft spot in your heart where you can love even what is broken in you?

Today, let’s practice that. I know that I need to practice it, because just writing these words brings tears to my eyes. Can I say “Enough!” to my inner tyrant, to what is rigid in my heart, and choose, instead, the soft spot?

Can you?

I read about this magical island in a New York Times article this week. Of course, the million dollar question is: How do they do it?

The article’s author, Dan Buettner, attributes it to a combination of four crucial factors: culture, belonging, purpose, and religion. He writes:

“If you pay careful attention to the way Ikarians have lived their lives, it appears that a dozen subtly powerful, mutually enhancing and pervasive factors are at work. It’s easy to get enough rest if no one else wakes up early and the village goes dead during afternoon naptime. It helps that the cheapest, most accessible foods are also the most healthful — and that your ancestors have spent centuries developing ways to make them taste good.

It’s hard to get through the day in Ikaria without walking up 20 hills. You’re not likely to ever feel the existential pain of not belonging or even the simple stress of arriving late. Your community makes sure you’ll always have something to eat, but peer pressure will get you to contribute something too. You’re going to grow a garden, because that’s what your parents did, and that’s what your neighbors are doing. You’re less likely to be a victim of crime because everyone at once is a busybody and feels as if he’s being watched.

At day’s end, you’ll share a cup of the seasonal herbal tea with your neighbor because that’s what he’s serving. Several glasses of wine may follow the tea, but you’ll drink them in the company of good friends. On Sunday, you’ll attend church, and you’ll fast before Orthodox feast days. Even if you’re antisocial, you’ll never be entirely alone. Your neighbors will cajole you out of your house for the village festival to eat your portion of goat meat.”

The Reason for Which You Wake Up in the Morning

Maybe it was the timing and the circumstances of reading this article that made it so very poignant for me – it was shared with me by a longtime, dear friend of mine in New York City, where I was visiting this past week. I was in town to photograph a wedding, and with the exception of the hours I was busy shooting the wedding, my visit was spent entirely with various friends who I have known and loved for years. It was the first time in a long, long time that I felt such a strong sense of community.

The magical, longevity-promoting island of Ikaria reminded that while I may eat well and go to yoga and get some sunshine here in Austin, without a powerful feeling of belonging, without being surrounded by friends (who have truly become my family), a major ingredient for a healthy (and happy) life is absent.

Equally necessary is a sense of purpose. In Okinawa, where people regularly live into their 100s, there is a concept they call ikigai, which means “the reason for which you wake up in the morning.” These past couple months, I have lost my connection to ikigai. I have spent the better part of the last few months sleeping. A lot. Because if I feel I have no reason to wake up in the morning, why wake up?

But my visit to New York splashed some metaphorical cold water on my face. I did wake up – with every photograph I took at that wedding I woke up. I remembered how powerful my drive to document human connection with photos once was, and how much I still enjoy it and feel fed at a soul level by it.

I remembered my purpose, my ikigai, with each beautiful comment I received from you in response to my last post about turning 37. What a perfect, incredible gift it was to be the unexpected recipient of all that love and appreciation. Like every photo I took, each comment roused my soul and inspired me to remain in this higher vibration, and not fall prey to my shadow.

Buettner concludes toward the end of the article, “As soon as you take culture, belonging, purpose or religion out of the picture, the foundation for long healthy lives collapses.” That’s quite a formula. It can certainly guide us in the right direction of making changes to our lives that support our health and happiness.

So I ask you…how can you improve one or some or all of these areas of your life to create your own version of Ikaria wherever you are, right now?

Click here to check out the article in The New York Times!

Sometimes I can’t write because I feel afraid that no one is out there listening and I am just fooling myself, thinking that I matter. Sometimes I can’t write because I feel afraid that my silly little thoughts are not enough to help you.

I often worry that I am letting you down by not posting enough, and then I definitely can’t write, because it just makes me feel overwhelmed, so I run to Netflix or Hulu for relief.

Sometimes I have moments of profound inspiration that I want more than anything to share with you, but then my daughter asks me to make her something to eat or I have to pay some bills or some other such daily-life nonsense and then it fades away, and is lost.

Or if the job of living is not enough to assassinate my inspiration, sometimes my own fear and doubt gladly step up for the task.

Sometimes I have nothing to say. Sometimes I feel that I am simply meant to receive and integrate what I’m learning and feeling and though I wish I could communicate with you, I just can’t.

Sometimes I’m afraid you won’t love me.

Sometimes I fear I am not good enough to do what it is I want to do. Sometimes I fear there is nothing I could say or do that could make your life better.

But mostly I fear that I don’t matter. That I am irrelevant. That my voice will be lost among the endless sea of voices broadcasting their existence across the world wide web. I mean seriously, who doesn’t have a blog these days?

I want to be writing every day so that you can count on me to be there for you no matter what. But I haven’t yet figured out how to be there for myself, no matter what. I’m working on that.

I don’t know what else to say except that my heart is with every one of you who is reading this who might be struggling, or feeling lonely or hopeless or frustrated or heartbroken or scared. I am with all of you. And I guess I  hope that sharing my shadow with you here in this public forum will make you feel less alone, and in so doing, be a sort of redemption for me too.

Ram Dass once said, about the meaning of this crazy life, that we are all just walking each other home. I like that.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning, turn on my computer, and feel absolutely overwhelmed with the sheer number of emails demanding my attention…watch this video, sign up for this webinar, buy this product, shop this sale, read this blog post, etc etc etc.

On the rare occasions when I log onto Facebook, I find myself instantly agitated by the options before me. Should I click to watch this video? Should I read this person’s status update? Oooh look someone posted pictures of their vacation in Hawaii! Hey this person just liked this other person’s status…

It’s endless. And the problem is that our nervous systems haven’t quite caught up. We are not designed to absorb the enormous quantity of information streaming toward us from all directions, all the time. Our only choice is to filter most of it out, but even the filtering process creates a stress on our systems.

We do not live in a culture that promotes being over doing. We do not live in a culture that encourages silence and looking inward. But these things are essential to healing. They are essential to living a balanced and centered and healthy life.

Lately, when I feel this overwhelm take hold, I’ve been turning everything off and sitting in front of my altar (where I’ve placed candles, sage, and incense, and some images that make me feel good) and I go back to the basics. The most basic act of being human, in fact. I simply breathe.

It’s challenging for me to turn off my monkey brain and turn a blind eye to my to-do list, so I focus on the breath by breathing in and out through my nose and simply noticing the way the breath feels warmer coming out my nostrils than it did going in. Putting my attention on this subtle temperature shift is enough to keep me present. It helps me to slow the pace of our webcentric world and reclaim the pace me and my nervous system prefer.

If the ride’s going too fast, you can always hop off and take a break. You just have to remember that you have that option.

I was expressing this frustration to my dear friend and soul sister, Lina. “I want to create!” I declared. “Why can’t I write anything today?!”

“Let the feelings do what they want to do,” she said. “You always think you need to do. But sometimes you just need to be.”

I want to create something beautiful and new today, but I must admit that today is a day for input, not output. So instead of trying to write, I decided to sit on my patio and enjoy the gorgeous 75-degree Austin evening and read some Rumi, one of my favorite poets.

And, as fate would have it, I read a Rumi poem that I very much want to share with you. So instead of creating, today will be about sharing.

I Trust You

The soul is a newly skinned hide, bloody

and gross. Work on it with manual discipline,

and the bitter tanning acid of grief.

You’ll become lovely and very strong.

If you can’t do this work yourself, don’t worry.

You don’t have to make a decision, one way or another.

The Friend, who knows a lot more than you do,

will bring difficulties and grief and sickness,

as medicine, as happiness, as the moment

when you’re beaten, when you hear Checkmate,

and can finally say with Hallaj’s voice,

I trust you to kill me.

Unlike “be free,” which creates expansion, “I know” creates constriction. If you know, there is no room to learn. If you know, then you can only ever see what you have already decided you know. If something doesn’t match what you already know, it will be ignored or discounted, because it doesn’t fit the reality that you’ve already decided is the truth.

There is no space in “I know.” “I know” is a contemptuous phrase. For those who “know,” there is black and there is white, but gray is absolutely intolerable. For those who know, believing in gray makes you a fool.

Doctors often fall prey to “I know.” The ones who don’t – the ones who allow themselves to be free to not know are the special ones. Those are the doctors I want to see. The ones who are brave and secure enough to embrace the truth that they don’t always know the truth.

Fighting for Your Own Limitations

“I know what multiple sclerosis is. I know that there is no cure. I know that what I eat has nothing to do with how I feel. I know that my personal relationships have nothing to do with how sick I am. I know the cause of my illness. I know that your way of seeing things doesn’t apply to me. I know that I am a victim of random unfortunate luck. I know that only doctors know. I know that I am not responsible for my own healing.”

These are the anthems of those with chronic illness who “know.”

“I know” is a closed door. “Be free” is an open door. But people who know will fight hard for their own limitations. People who know will defend with passion and fervor what it is that they think they know. And that’s okay. If you choose to be free, you can tolerate people who know.

But understand that the reverse is not true. People who know will be terrified and enraged by you if you choose to be free. You will be ridiculed, discounted, marginalized, and run away from. These two phrases and their respective realities cannot coexist for those who know.

The openness of being free is a direct threat to the certainty of knowing. The willingness to revise one’s position. The willingness to admit vulnerability. The willingness to embrace the fundamental uncertainty of life. This is the essence of being free. And this, by the way, is the expansive state that makes healing possible.

I drove my lethargic bag o’ bones there, all the while dreading the feeling of not-good-enough-ness that would surely descend upon me when I failed to meet my own yogic standards.

But I got lucky today. I was blessed with a yoga teacher who delivered exactly what I was too constricted to realize I needed. She turned the entire class into a meditation on the words Be Free. Today, she said, our postures are not about creating shapes, they are about letting go. Letting go of anything that keeps us from feeling free.

The power of words is remarkable. At first I repeated the mantra in my mind just because she said so. Every inhale was Be. Every exhale, Free. But with each repetition, the meaning of those words began to expand throughout my body and take on multiple meanings. As I absorbed those meanings, I felt the entirety of me relax.

Be Free of the tension in my muscles. Be Free of my harsh self-judgments. Be Free of the beliefs that don’t serve me. Be Free of the fears that bind me. Be Free of my monkey mind, that tape in my head that won’t ever stop playing. Be Free of of my unforgiveness. Be Free of my anxiety. Be Free of my heartache. Be Free of my loneliness. Be Free of my envy. Be Free of disappointment. Be Free of expectation. Be Free of my inner tyrant.

How well I performed the postures didn’t matter in this class. This class was about allowing myself to Be. Free. To let go. To love myself. To Release.

Be Free of “I should.” Be Free of “I should have.” Just Be. Allow.

Words are potent. As my yoga teacher reminded us at the end of class: Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. And there you are.

So today, Be Free. Take some time to practice this mantra. Sit down on the floor or on a chair and inhale Be, exhale Free. As you do, see if you can let go of some of the tension you are holding in your muscles. As you breathe in with Be and release with Free, remember that all the wisdom of the greatest healers, masters, leaders, and sages is within you.

Trust yourself today.