Posts By Linda Egenes
The Solitude of Self
In Kate Bolick’s new book Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own, the author credits five writers who helped awaken her to the glories of the solitary life: Neith Boyce, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edith Wharton and Maeve Brennan.
Some of these writers lived during a time when choosing to remain unmarried was an unconventional lifestyle, and the solitary life was possible for only a select few women who could somehow obtain an education and earn a decent living—or who had their own means.
Kids Need Meditation Too: What Children Say About the Transcendental Meditation Technique
There was a time during second grade, when I didn’t want to go to school. Not because I was a poor student or didn’t like to study. I actually loved school. The problem was that we had just moved to a new neighborhood where two girls my age lived—only they made it crystal clear that they didn’t want to be friends with me.
Even though the situation was resolved and the three of us became friends by the end of the year, I see now that I was under a lot of stress during that time. My family had actually moved twice in two years—once to a rental home and then to our permanent, brand-new home in a different school district. I was a sensitive kid and being ostracised was hard on me. So I reacted by getting sick a lot, or in at least one instance, pretending to have a stomach ache, just to avoid the whole situation.
Living From Your Heart: Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum Shares Her Passion for Women’s Heart Health
I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that there is a shift in medicine taking place—not only because patients are demanding more natural, preventive approaches, but because a new generation of doctors is leading the way.
No one embodies this new paradigm of medicine more than Suzanne Steinbaum in her incredibly readable book Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum’s Heart Book: Every Woman’s Guide to a Heart-Healthy Life. As an MD, a cardiologist, the Director of Women and Heart Disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, and a spokesperson for the American Heart Association’s Go Red Women campaign—Dr. Steinbaum has the credentials. And because she speaks with the authentic voice of experience about how to live a healthy life—in her book, on her website and blog, as a columnist for Huffington Post, as a featured guest on 20/20, Good Morning America, and major networks, and as the host of her TV show, Focus OnHealth—women are listening.
Turning Fear Into Love: A Mother Tells Her Story
When you meet someone as happy and radiant as Flavia Finnegan, wife, mother and career woman, it’s hard to imagine that she ever felt fear or trauma. Yet traumatic events can happen to anyone.
Flavia, now 40, grew up in Brazil and as part of her undergraduate work as an international business major, she spent a year studying in Stockholm. “I felt safe and protected there,” she says. “I loved learning in a completely new environment, experiencing different food and colors and weather. I felt blessed to have those experiences.”
NYC Ballet Principal Megan Fairchild On Dance, Stress and TM
Being a professional ballerina can be hard on your health, mentally and physically.
For Megan Fairchild, age 30, a principal at the New York City Ballet who danced the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy in PBS’ telecast of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, stress almost derailed her career. On the fast track since joining the corps de ballet at age eighteen, becoming a soloist at nineteen and a principal by age twenty, she was suffering from debilitating panic attacks that put her out of work for days at a time.
Tolerance as a State of Being
As tensions rose in Paris and demonstrations swept Western Europe last January, people around the world wondered how to stop religious intolerance and promote peace and goodwill among all people.
Yet with racial and religious hostilities worldwide reaching a six-year high, as reported in the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, intolerance is a global issue that affects us no matter where we live.
Embrace Your Moods
“Women are moody.” We’ve heard this all our lives, usually as a criticism, and it’s a sure bet that if you’re a woman and a professional, you’ve spent a fair amount of effort trying to act the opposite of moody in order to succeed in the workplace.
It’s time to stop trying to be like a man and embrace the full range of your emotions. That is the advice of psychiatrist Julie Holland, who points out that being “sensitive to our environments, empathic to our children’s needs and intuitive of our partners’ intentions is not only hardwired into your feminine brain, but is basic to your survival and your children’s.”
Overcoming the Stress of ADHD, Dyslexia and Other Learning Challenges
Stress is now thought to be a major factor in learning disorders such as ADHD. Now researchers are finding that the Transcendental Meditation technique—which has been shown in dozens of peer- reviewed studies to reduce stress, depression and anxiety—is helping students overcome ADHD and other learning challenges.
Sarina Grosswald, EdD, was one of the first researchers to study the connection between stress and ADHD.
Classical Guitarist Sharon Isbin on Creativity and TM
When you hear a musician play who stirs your soul and at the same time is so in command of her craft that she makes it look simple, you know you are in the presence of a true artist.
Sharon Isbin has made the intricate art of performing classical guitar look simple. Considered the leading classical guitarist of our time, she was named “Best Classical Guitarist” by Guitar Player magazine and is the first guitarist in over 43 years to receive two classical GRAMMY Awards (in 2001 and 2010). A former student of Andrès Segovia and a graduate of Yale University, she has played at the White House and Carnegie Hall. Her rise to stardom as a woman playing an instrument that is usually played by men was chronicled in Sharon Isbin: Troubador, a recent documentary on her creative performances and collaborations with artists in a variety of genres that was released last fall by American Public Television.
Multitasking and the Transcendental Meditation Technique
Have you ever noticed that when you really focus on something—writing, cooking, creating a work of art, playing a musical instrument, reading a great book—you end up feeling refreshed, renewed, revitalized? Yet when you do the same task while also texting your kids, talking on the phone, listening to the radio and keeping up with each email that comes in, you end up feeling exhausted?
Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin says there’s a reason for this: multitasking takes a toll on our brains. Not only does it wear us out, it basically doesn’t work.