Archive | good living

07 February 2012 ~ 0 Comments

Shaping My Minimalist Mindset

I’m sitting here, stuck, again, overwhelmed by this next round of purging.   I haven’t bought anything new in a while, and while I also haven’t brought in much stuff over the past couple of months, I still feel like there’s still so much left to get rid of.   But so far, I’ve:   [...]

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01 February 2012 ~ 0 Comments

Grow Yourself: Wake Up Half an Hour Earlier

There’s something to be said about the hours between 3:30am and 6:30am. The Yogis call it the Amrit Vela, or, the “ambrosial period”. It’s a place that offers you a quiet stillness you may see for the next 15 hours, so it’s a perfect time to create the space for lies ahead. Here are 10 [...]

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25 January 2012 ~ 0 Comments

Grow Yourself: Get a Massage

When’s the last time you got physically intimate that also didn’t involve or result in a sexual experience? Nonsexual physical contact is the most underused and underutilized tool for expressing intimacy, mindfulness, love, self-care, and self-love. Massage has multiple benefits, some of which include: eases muscle pain increases joint flexibility lessens anxiety and depression improves [...]

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18 January 2012 ~ 0 Comments

Grow Yourself: Create a Self-Portrait

In my Shaolin Kung Fu class, my Sifu was always asking us, “Do You Know Who You Are?” Usually, we were in the midst of some grueling circuit exercise, pushing our limits, and our threshold of pain. He always answered the question for us: “Not as well as you think you do.” He was impelling [...]

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17 January 2012 ~ 2 Comments

NY Locavore: My Locavore Dilemma

Just a few months ago, my fridge was full to the brim of leafy greens, roots and eggs. At one point, I could barely keep up with my lofty culinary intentions and the fridge, as friend and colleague Olivia put it, became the place where vegetables went to die. Today, I’m staring at an empty [...]

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14 January 2012 ~ 0 Comments

The End of the World

A couple of weeks of overindulging on refined flour and lack of proper sleep have me nursing a mild sinus infection and giving me an excuse to stay in bed and watch old serials on Netflix. I’ve just finished season 3 of Torchwood and decided to see what the fuss of Doctor Who is about. [...]

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11 January 2012 ~ 0 Comments

Grow Yourself: Ask a Child to Teach You Something You Don’t Know How to Do

As adults, we have a tendency to think of ourselves as more experienced, more worldly, and certainly, much wiser than our half-pint counterparts. But the world is changing rapidly, at a pace few adults have been able to keep up with, and we can no longer afford to be willfully resistant (and ignorant) to this [...]

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10 January 2012 ~ 0 Comments

NY Locavore: There’s Still Plenty to Eat in Winter

New York State now boasts 180 winter farmers markets, no mean feat considering many our vegetable growers are done for the year. And with Hurricane Irene and Tropical Lee devastating much of the Hudson Valley and Catskill regions this summer, the presence of these markets is a bittersweet reminder of Mother Nature’s destroying principle as well as farmers’ [...]

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08 January 2012 ~ 0 Comments

The Value of Things

I’m back from a weekend in Syracuse, NY where I attended the NYS Ag Society meeting. It was a long weekend of tours and debates and discussions about agriculture. I had a lot of fun, and as usual, met some really interesting people and came home with a ton of ideas for my other business. [...]

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07 January 2012 ~ 2 Comments

Me, Unattached

A major part of this purging I’ve undergone this past month and a half was really not about getting rid of all this STUFF. Yes, this STUFF needed to GO. But this process really was about getting down to the accountability of how I got here (overwhelmed, stuck, unhappy) in the first place. I wasn’t [...]

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04 January 2012 ~ 0 Comments

Grow Yourself: Get Rid of Your Stuff

How much do you really need to live a happy, healthy, successful life? For some people, brand-new, shiny, sparkly things are an external (albeit superficial) measure of success. Stuff makes them feel important and admired envied. Stuff lets everyone know they have arrived. For others, surrounding themselves with lots of stuff keeps them from having [...]

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03 January 2012 ~ 0 Comments

Reclaim the Food You Eat

Over the past fifty years, USAmericans have experienced a shift in the way they relate to food with disturbing consequences. The popular attitude seems to be, “I don’t care where it comes from or how it’s made as long as I can recognize it, it smells good, it tastes good, and it’s cheap.” Real, whole [...]

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02 January 2012 ~ 0 Comments

Grow Yourself: A Weekly Journey to Becoming You

Are people telling you… “You can’t have that.” “You can’t do that.” “You’re not smart enough.” “You’re not skinny enough.” “You’re just not that funny.” “You can’t afford that.” “You’ll never make it.” “You’re not pretty enough.” “You need to just pick one thing and stick with it.” “You have too many standards.” “You have [...]

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12 December 2011 ~ 0 Comments

Gone, Baby Gone

Yesterday marked a MAJOR accomplishment for me: In just two weeks, I cleared out stacks and stacks of papers, magazines, and books that have been weighing me down for years. This is a milestone, considering that I gave myself six weeks to get all of this paper out (I hope to be done with the [...]

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06 December 2011 ~ 0 Comments

Christmas is Dead.

To me, anyway. If you let my mother tell it, she’d say it stopped working for me when I had to start giving gifts. She’s never wrong and knows me better than I know myself, so I never tell her that the reason why I liberated myself from her idea of Christmas is because it [...]

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22 November 2011 ~ 4 Comments

Going Minimalist. Ish.

I am a hoarder. Of the information variety. But not like those people on those reality TV series where you can barely get into the apartment, have infestations, rotting food, and dead animals buried under piles of STUFF and are caving in floors and whatever else is clearly a mental illness that refuse to I [...]

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24 June 2011 ~ 0 Comments

Bring Proof of Your Locavorism to Union Square Greenmarket to be Eligible for Edible Prizes

There are several things that I don’t like to admit about myself, like my middle class (upbringing) tendencies/sensibilities, specifically the arrogant/uppity ones; my predominately Locavore lifestyle (I prefer the term, locally minded);  and, I am not a foodie (dammit). But the more I resist the label, the more I find myself embracing it. Locavore, that [...]

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28 April 2011 ~ 0 Comments

What’s On Your To-Don’t List?

I try to avoid focusing on what I don’t want or don’t want to do, because I believe it can give more energy to the very thing I’m trying to avoid. But I do think a “to-don’t” list can help you clarify your “to-do”. What do you think? Read the article over at No More [...]

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26 April 2011 ~ 0 Comments

The Forgotten Spring: 8 Spring Edibles to Shake Off the Winter Doldrums | melissa danielle

I wrote this back when the weather was all funky and gloomy. I needed a little pick-me-up and recalled how spring vegetables get no love. Here’s my ode to spring. The Forgotten Spring: 8 Spring Edibles to Shake Off the Winter Doldrums.

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06 April 2011 ~ 0 Comments

Upcoming: April at The Good Life

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Check out these events already in progress or coming up. I hope to see you! +Spring into Action: 40 Days of Yoga Classes are held daily at the Brooklyn Free School through April 30th Unlimited Passes are still available at $40 & $25 http://40daysofyogaspring.eventbrite.com +Field Trip: Urban Foraging with Leda Meredith in Prospect Park Sunday, [...]

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