Living the Present Moment

In this story, I explore the memories of a doctor-in-training as a resident in the hospital. My memories of the intensive care unit (ICU) are filled with the intense emotion that colors the space between life and death. With these critically ill patients, we sit with them on the brink of death and the edge of life, and we hope that they can make it back over the precipice into healing. I studied t...

This personal story is dedicated to my mom, Vivienne Ying . This is the current working version of a story that is evolving. I like to think of it as version 2. At some points along the journey, a story feels like it is ready to be shared. Enjoy!

This story began with an exercise to uncover a memory that would make a good story. As my attention narrowed to a particular moment, I had the feeling that there is a story in here somewhere that I want to tell. This moment with my dad held significance for me. I began to unpack the scenes and emotions of my eight-year-old self from the vaults of memory. Bringing this past moment into the present,...

Why did Persephone eat that pomegranate seed? As seasons shift and the Spring Equinox approaches, science gives us an explanation. The earth rotates on its axis, and the side that faces the sun has daylight and the other side is in the darkness of night. However, the Earth also revolves around the sun with a tilt in the axis, and this gives us the seasons. When the tilt brings more direct sunlight...

“Stop making up stories!” I overhear an exasperated mom talking to her 4-year-old. In this context, the word “story” has become synonymous with lying, making up fiction, not telling the truth. However, in the context of the art of storytelling, making up fiction does not mean that a story does not contain a deeper truth, a universal truth, a deeper meaning. What is Truth? W...

Storytellers in my tradition look for stories that hold some sort of “magic.” We tell stories that we love–sometimes for reasons that we know and sometimes we just keep telling them until we figure out why. This story has held me since I first heard it. Folk stories travel across the world and adapt to the cultures that they meet. The wisdom is distilled and often poured into ano...

There are some stories that you do not really know until you’ve heard it directly from the people that have lived it. Growing up, I knew my parents story of immigration from bits and pieces of overheard conversation, stories gathered second hand told by other relatives, and gaps filled in from similar stories that I have heard. My parents left Jamaica to escape political violence and a faili...

“Show me the manner in which a Nation or community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals.” ~ William Ewart Gladstone In this podcast story, I explore the tradition of Ninth Night in Jamaica and celebrate the life of my Uncle Charlie. It was a gift to be...

“Don’t go into the graveyard after dark!” Perhaps like my friend, Janis McCall, you grew up with this warning. But really… is there anything to fear in graveyards? “Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards,” said Samuel Beckett. However, every story has a reason to be told. This story comes to me from Scotland, part family story, part history, part caut...

Unsure of how to proceed, the young soldier prayed silently while he continued to pace. As if summoned by some invisible force, he homed in on one of the flag-swathed caskets. “I know this man,” he thought. His arms seemed to move of their own accord, placing the roses he held atop the coffin. ~ Excerpt from Patrick O’Donnell’s The Unknowns I have this odd practice in publi...

This spooky Halloween season, I got a chance to perform at Leu Gardens in Orlando, Florida, with the cast of “Haunting Tales,” formerly called “Ghosts in the Garden.” Last Friday, the morning was beautiful, but the afternoon brought torrential rains. Will people still come? The organizers talked about cancelling the show. Ninety minutes before the performance, the rain slow...

Don’t think of a purple elephant! What do you do? … You think of a purple elephant. Let’s use the science of the mind in our favor. What you focus on is what persists. Let’s practice shifting our focus onto space. If your mind goes to the tightness and dense spots, just shift your focus back to space. Meditation is training the mind. As we focus on space, we also focus on p...

What if you could hit the pause button? If your inner storyteller is moving down from one worst case scenario to the next, the stress and tension are building up. The body does not distinguish between real stress and imagined stress, so when the mind (and the news) is playing the same story over and over again. It might be time to hit the pause button. In this meditation, we reclaim the story that...

Learn the technique of Square Breathing to balance the nervous system. When we are stuck in an anxiety state of chronic sympathetic overdrive, breathing meditation can activate the parasympathetic relaxation and down-regulate the nervous system. The breath is always in the present moment. As we slow down to meet the breath, the nervous system will find balance. Square Breathing Imagine a Square In...

“Meditation is like a gym in which you develop the powerful mental muscles of calm and insight.” – Ajahn Brahm In this time when everyone is struggling with mental balance, I have decided to use this podcast/blog to create a series exploring the types of meditation and offering audio online. We live in uncertain times. While that is perhaps always true, many of the things that I was certain about...

“Storytelling is not a lost art, but a found art!” Mary Lou Williams moved to South Florida to retire from a career in teaching and decided to take up a second career as a professional storyteller. In this interview … How and why someone would become a professional storyteller? What is storytelling anyway? Where do you get stories to tell? Learn the history of the National Storytelling...

“What we are hungry for in the Western world is a reanimation of spirit.” ~ Prof. Stephen Cavitt The shaman enters the dream-like state to bring back wisdom, guidance, and healing. There are many ways to navigate the multiple layers of reality. One of those ways is the drum. Many shamanic traditions use the hypnotic beat of the drum to induce a shamanic journey into altered states of c...

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” ~ Hippocrates  The term “plant medicine” is often appropriated today to mean the mind-altering substances like ayahuasca, mescaline, and psylisibin. These “plant medicine” ceremonies have become trendy as a quick route to escape the mundane ordinary world and have a “spiritual experience.” As a certified nutri...

“That’s not going to happen, it hurt too much just to tell this one, I would never be able to tell the rest of the story.”  Jim Gregory began to unravel his painful stories with the support of the oral Storytelling community, and he did manage to tell the rest of the story. As a young white man during the 1960’s, he traveled into the South with a team of eight in their teen...

Legal Aid is a non-profit private law firm that protects the vulnerable by providing free legal representation to low income families for victims of domestic violence, children who have been abused, neglected, or abandoned, families who are at risk of homelessness, seniors and veterans who are denied access to health care or other benefits, and other groups of at-risk individuals. Corey Huffman is...

What does it take to build a dream? Maybe an architect. Steven Jallad designs and oversees the building of homes in Naples, Florida. His path to architecture began with a love for drawing and working with his hands. He followed that passion as the thread in his life. The craft of carpentry during the summers kept his hands working while earning a degree in Architecture from the University of Virgi...

In my expanded definition, “medicine” is anything that heals the body, mind, emotions, or spirit. As a physician, this includes the Western medications that I prescribe, but it goes beyond to include so much more. In every conversation, it is important to define the context and agree upon the definitions that we are using. Here my context is the expanded definition of medicine: anythin...

Harvest Bee Farms KT Alaimo, owner and manager of Harvest Bee Farms, is passionate about farming. Devoted to biodynamic farming, he grows “good soil” and good produce is the byproduct. As farmers are aging and wisdom is being lost, he is of the new generation of farmers working to preserve sustainable and healthy farming techniques and wisdom. In this interview, he tells the story of h...

“To make the world a better place by making it more musical.” The mission of Music Together has spread to over 3000 locations and over 40 countries. Parents bring their children from infants to 5 years old to a weekly community music experience. With music and songs from around the world, the curriculum creates the safe space for everyone to sing. Yes! Even the babies! I recently learned about thi...

“Writer, Teacher, and Mostly Recovered Nerd,” Jean Moroney works with ambitious individuals and teams who know sharpening their mental skills will give them a performance edge. She teaches thinking skills that help us make better judgment calls, align motivation with intentions, and cross the finish line sooner. She believes that we can all learn to become better, faster problem-solver...