David J. Bookbinder's Blog, page 2
July 18, 2018
Follow Your Yellow Brick Road
In the film The Wizard of Oz, after a tornado has lifted her house into the air and set it down again, Dorothy steps outside to survey the damage. As she observes the rolling hills, the fantastic buildings, the yellow brick road, the munchkins, she begins to realize that something has changed. She tells her little dog, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore. We must be over the rainbow!” As a child, watching this…
June 27, 2018
Artists for Artists (Part I)
NOTE: If you live in the Boston area, please join me on Friday, July 6th, at Cabot Street Books & Cards in Beverly for a reception for an exhibition of my Flower Mandalas. Time: 6pm – 8pm. Place: 272 Cabot St, Beverly, MA 01915 While I was waiting for my flight home in the vast Hong Kong International airport, I reflected on the many things that had been stirred in me by the experience…
June 21, 2018
Intense!
I returned from a trip to Hong Kong a week or so ago, and naturally people asked me how it was. My answer: Intense! I went to Hong Kong to do workshops on The Art of Balance and Cultivating Creativity with participants in the 2018 Asia Yoga Conference. I came back with vivid mental – and literal – snapshots of this fascinating city. And I also now have sense of family connection with…
May 23, 2018
The Easiest Way to Meditate
Many people think meditation is complicated or difficult, but it’s not. It’s literally as simple as breathing, and a good place to begin meditating is with a one-minute meditation repeated throughout the day. At a retreat I attended years ago, I was introduced to the one-minute meditation through the tolling of the Mindfulness Bell. At random times throughout each day, when someone sounded a bell, we all had to stop what we were…
May 16, 2018
A Mini-Lesson on Mini Self-Care
This post is a reprise of one of the most popular posts from last year. It’s about how to take care of yourself when you’re too pressed for time for normal self-care. It’s one of many self-care practices in my new book The Art of Balance: Staying Sane in an Insane World, which will be on sale for a “Countdown Deal” for four days, starting Friday. In the summer of 1979, after two…
May 9, 2018
Merch!
As many of you know, I’ve been making Flower Mandala images for a very long time. What you may not know – because I’ve never really promoted them – is that I’ve also created a wide variety of Flower Mandala products that are available on various websites. These include T-shirts, prints on paper or canvas, greeting cards, journals, posters, mugs, decorative tiles, calendars, tote bags, and more. They’re available on Amazon.com, FineArtAmerica.com, CafePress.com,…
April 18, 2018
Guest Post: Ken Ring is Still Waiting to Die….
Waiting to Die – Part II Kenneth Ring I might have been a tad too glib when in the first installment of what clearly will be a terminal series having to do with my personal terminus, I observed that at least for me waiting to die was rather boring. After this winter, I have had cause to change my mind. For a while there, I thought it might be more of a matter…
Ken Ring is Still Waiting to Die….
Waiting to Die – Part II Kenneth Ring I might have been a tad too glib when in the first installment of what clearly will be a terminal series having to do with my personal terminus, I observed that at least for me waiting to die was rather boring. After this winter, I have had cause to change my mind. For a while there, I thought it might be more of a matter…
April 4, 2018
Justice: Attorneys, samurai, and Old Testament Jews
In the late ’50s, psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg observed that as we mature, we progress through three basic levels of moral development. At the pre-conventional levels, our sense of what’s fair and just is self-centered; we are concerned mainly with satisfying our own needs and avoiding punishment. Most of us move on to the conventional levels, where our sense of justice is based mainly on societal expectations; we make moral decisions based on rules,…
March 21, 2018
How (and why) I became a therapist
Recently, I was in touch with a woman who is transitioning from being an engineer to becoming a therapist, and we’ve been exchanging emails on our respective paths. I thought I’d share a bit of mine, here. My path to becoming a therapist was a slow, trial-and-error process. I’m 67 now and was 51 when I enrolled in Cambridge College’s program to become a mental health counselor. I grew up a sort of…
