OK, I admit I am a fanatic regarding pure air. I once (single-handedly) moved a dresser into the hallway of a charming B&B because of the mothball smell (my boyfriend at the time was not impressed). Admittedly, it has never been easy being me/green - I smell EVERYTHING! Synthetic perfumes, soaps, laundry detergents, ‘air-fresheners’, and conventional-you-name-it-so-called-fresh smells gag me, (I must have been a bloodhound in a previous life). But, having made my living specifying healthy home materials for a long time, I am not only an Eco-Taste-Maker (after all, smell is the crucial component of taste), but also a Toxic Avenger.

The U.S. government has finally admitted formaldehyde is a cancer-causing chemical, which is found in many common household products.

It’s about time! I have always believed it is of VITAL importance to analyze items to make certain they truly are non-toxic and this proves it. 

 Our sense of smell is so powerful that one whiff of something can instantly transport us back to a certain time and place. Think mom’s apple pie, or my new favorite smell – herb and lemon roasted chicken - YUM! I am new to eating meat [only free-range, organic] and cannot believe I never appreciated this amazing aroma before! I am also surprised at how often this sense is neglected in a home. The simple act of opening a window and burning a candle can remedy even the stinkiest of houses. Take it a step further and create any mood with a scented (non-toxic) candle - there is even the smell of The New York Times in a candle! (Made with palm wax & eco production, I fact-checked).

 Besides just smelling good, one of the most important components of a healthy home is proper ventilation.

As in Yoga (and in life), expression of movement is key to avoid toxic build up (in feelings and emotions also), so…Air it out!

Open your windows wide and let your home, and yourself breathe!

 Happy Summer Breezes …blowing through the jasmine in my mind, ~ Cheryl 

Since these substances may interact in unpredictable ways with each other or water additives like chlorine, the LOHAS community may have some legitimate concerns about the trends for increased US prescription drug use.  This connects personal health choices and commitments to sustainability and environmental health to what happens when a patient enters a doctor’s office, especially among people looking for options to improve health through non-invasive, natural, and lifestyle oriented solutions.  Yet for those who inquire about stress management with the majority of conventional doctors, they may be more likely to receive advice about anti-anxiety prescription options than a suggestion about exercise or styles of yoga to try.  Though pharmaceuticals play a key role for some conditions, many people would prefer making lifestyle changes to improve their health when possible.  

The result of an exclusively traditional benefit plan may leave people opting for a lack of follow-up or no care at all if they prefer holistic alternatives.  For LOHAS companies, ideas are brewing over how to connect cost-effective benefit planning to corporate values by offering benefit plans that provide options to include types of care that employees want and need: care that focuses on preventive medicine and whole person health, like holistic or integrative medicine.  Investing in integrative medicine has the potential to capture the best of both fiscal and value-driven goals. 

• Urban 
• Culturally proud/sensitive
• Tech/Media savvy
• Global
• Socially Conscious

The below article is brought to you as part of elephant journal’s ongoing coverage of LOHAS Forum. For our complete coverage, be sure to follow elephant on Twitter and Facebook.

By the year 2050, less than 53 percent of the U.S. population will be non-Hispanic white. The other 47 percent? People of Color.  And they will have trillions of dollars to spend.

"We're becoming a majority People of Color Nation," says Erica Williams, Citizen Engagement Lab. 

Speaking at the LOHAS Forum 2011 in Boulder, CO, Williams also predicted that "Millennials," or people born between 1981-2000, will eclipse the number of Baby Boomers by 2020. Additionally, the majority of U.S. youth will be non-white by 2019.

"In short," she says, "we are getting younger, and  browner."

Williams is part of the next generation of Social Entrepreneurs, who are blending culture and technology to target these domestic emerging markets. 

Rha Goddess, CEO of Move The Crowd, sums up the business strategy simply as: Stay True. Get Paid. Do Good. 

It's all about making connections, collaborating, and most importantly, creating a community of shared values. That means to find customers, you will have to do more than speak their language, you will have to have an ongoing conversation.

"Listening's great. Responding is better," says Rolando Brown, Poet and Collaborator of mvmt.com. "If you're not responding, you become irrelevant very fast."

The below article is brought to you as part of elephant journal’s ongoing coverage of LOHAS Forum. For our complete coverage, be sure to follow elephant on Twitter and Facebook.

Dr. Jean Houston's presence is warm and familar like your second grade teacher. Adorned in a long velvet sparkeling coat she emmenates an air of majesty. 

Dr. Houston echoed my own thoughts and feelings, but from an angle of extensive research and experience. She says, we've lived the good times...we're living the great times. To reach a fully realized society we must first actualize our individual human potential. As the most importzant people to have lived we are choosing the fate of everything— to die or to grow.

What qualites of the mind/body/spirit must we cultivate to achieve a planetary society?

We need passion, deep listening, music, women, and vision.

Rely on the teachings to evaluate a guru: Do not have blind faith, but also no blind criticism. His Holiness the Dalai Lama power of faith is amazing. Some years ago we were teaching a workshop in Plymouth, England, when a student eagerly told us that Deepak Chopra had 'renounced the world' and was teaching at the local Heart and Soul Healing Center. He was holding gatherings each night and participants were experiencing profound healings and personal transformations. When we went to meet the so-called 'Deepak' we discovered him to be an artful imposter. With his exposure, his followers lost faith and the healings and transformations stopped. This was a classic example of when belief in a guru / healer supersedes our own intelligence, due to the faith and longing to be 'saved'. The real Deepak Chopra later thanked us!
In yogic terms the word guru means 'remover of darkness or ignorance'. One of India's greatest holy men, Ramana Maharshi, often said that the role of the guru was to push the student inside in order to see the guru within– as the true guru is within each and every one of us.
Yet invariably the opposite is true, as seen when a guru encourages adoration, dependence and obedience to them and them only. This is known in India as gurudom (as in kingdom) where the guru amasses a big following and sees him/herself as the ultimate authority but does not empower their students. The guru may even call their followers babies or treat them like children, thereby keeping the student feeling inferior and the teacher all-knowing and superior.
This can lead to an 'enlightened ego,' where one experiences all the wonders of enlightenment but the ego snatches the reward: “I am Enlightened!” Yet who or what is enlightened? This is not unusual, as the ego is subtle and seductive, and it is a trap when we believe we are enlightened. Those that say don’t know and those who know don’t say!
Similarly, many people go to every healer that comes to town in their longing to be fixed or healed. They believe every healer will be the one to solve the mystery of whatever is causing their ill health. We also get addicted to movie stars and their seemingly wonderful lives as a way of filling the void in our own lives.
Hence the scenario where we see followers becoming guru junkies, not just dependent but actually addicted to their guru, as if he or she were a therapist or movie star with their followers doing anything to meet them, wearing necklaces with the guru's photo, and hanging the guru's picture on their wall, but often only seeing them from a distance and knowing nothing about them. As with therapy where a patient may 'fall in love' with their therapist, so the spiritual student can 'fall in love' with the guru, although this is more of a strong infatuation. Many times female followers will fall so in love with the guru that they even submit to sexual abuse, and we know of gurus mistreating students in the name of obedience: if you are truly devoted then you will do this or that for me. The innocent student obeys, only to regret it afterwards and in need of therapy to make sense of it.
We have both had personal time experiencing the guru student relationship. In the late 1960’s Ed went through a classic traditional yogic training where obedience was paramount and his devotion was unswerving. "I trusted that whatever I was told without question and that if I surrendered my point of view or whatever I believed to be true then I would be a candidate for self realization. My guru once said: 'True surrender is when you are right and the guru is wrong and you can surrender being right.' At the same time I believed my guru was the incarnation of god. My blind devotion caused me to be too dependent on my guru and left me unable to function as an ordinary person. I even felt I was more special than others who didn't have this experience, that as I had a yoga name and title I was so superior!"
We worship the guru as god and see them as divine while mistreating or denigrating others. When we were last in India we were visiting the ashram of a guru who hugs each of her thousands of devoted followers. When we arrived the guru was in the middle of a devotional goddess worship, where both she and her many disciples enter into ecstatic states. We noticed a man standing with his young child directly in front of the guru, expressing deep devotion. Soon afterwards we were all in line to catch an elevator to the residential floors. As there was only one elevator there was a long line. Suddenly this man and his child came right to the front. Ed pointed out there was a line of waiting people, at which the man retorted "F…k you!" Aha! The guru is divine; everyone else is not.
This is ironic because in India the most wonderful greeting is Namaste, which means 'the god in me honors the god in you.' Unless we see the god or truth in all people we are like a misguided missile. We limit our own growth and chance to be free. As the Dalai Lama said to us when we were with him at his residence in India: "We are all equal here!"
Many people surrender to a guru with a kind of blind faith, or without checking the teacher out first. Yet, would you marry a person as soon as you met them, without knowing them? Wouldn’t you spend as much time as possible so you know they are right for you? The crazy wisdom Buddhist teacher, Chogyam Trungpa, said we should always be sceptical. Swami Satchidananda said that we should check out a guru just as we would check out a chicken before buying one.
Perhaps we worship a guru so blindly and surrender so willingly due to our own self-doubt, the reluctance to acknowledge our own innate understanding, insights and wisdom. We make the guru greater than we are, demeaning ourselves in the process. And yet the same truth that is within the guru is within us all. What we learn from the external guru is that just as one person can awaken, so we all can. Perhaps we need help, yes, but only until we stop searching outside ourselves. Then the seeker becomes the seer.

******

See our award-winning book: BE THE CHANGE, How Meditation Can Transform You and the World, forewords by the Dalai Lama and Robert Thurman, with contributors Jon Kabat-Zinn, Jane Fonda, Jack Kornfield, Marianne Williamson, Ram Dass, Byron Katie, and many others.

Our 3 meditation CD's: Metta—Loving kindness and Forgiveness; Samadhi–Breath Awareness and Insight; and Yoga Nidra–Inner Conscious Relaxation, are available at: www.EdandDebShapiro.com

There are billions of people on our planet and yet, amazingly, each one of us has a completely different mind with exclusive thoughts, feelings, likes and dislikes. One may desire to be an astronaut and walk on the moon, another a caregiver helping the elderly, another gets lost in the world of delusion or depression.

This mind is able to grasp the most complicated technical theories or create beautiful works of art, yet it can just as easily be distracted by meaningless trivia or get painfully addicted to heroin. Have you ever wondered about your own mind? How it can move so quickly from feeling good to despair, from clarity to utter confusion, and all in just a moment?

In yoga and meditation we teach to quiet the mind, to sink into a quiet inner spaciousness free of the normal babble and dramas. Some find this hard to do as, like a monkey, the mind is used to running amok and having its own way.

“When you begin to watch your mind, it becomes careful. It’s almost like the moment you don’t watch your children, they’re ready to get into some mischief. If you keep an eye on them, they will be quiet. The mind is like that – when it knows that you're watching, it will behave.” -- Swami Satchidananda

Our thoughts can be brilliantly productive but they can just as easily generate confusion or even fear. For no matter how intellectually astute or creative we are, this may have little or no effect upon habitual feelings such as shame, guilt, anger, or insecurity.

Over time these fears and neuroses become like iron bars that surround us, immovable and fixed. How often have you heard it said, “This is just the way I am, I can’t (or won’t) change!” As we unfortunately believe our fleeting thoughts are real, so we just have to live with and suffer the consequences.

It should be noted here that we are talking about the ego-mind that we deal with daily and gets so caught up in itself that it cannot see outside of its basic selfish nature. Through meditation we can become aware of its games and go beyond the fixation of "all about me" to see the wisdom-mind that is radiant, altruistic and free.

But being locked in the mind is like having your head stuck in a cardboard box with no escape. All we are able to see are our own issues going round and round. The mind that perpetually repeats itself becomes its own enemy, as resentments, hurt, desire, and bitterness are relentless.

Yet, to top it all, this is considered to be normal. We even proclaim, “My mind is so busy it’s driving me crazy!” as if this were some sort of achievement. Despite that the mind is habitual and neurotic, we continue to believe our issues are real and play the dramas out over and again, like a dog chasing its own tail.

So, how do we break this pattern? We only find peace when we finally get the message that to be living inside our heads all the time is actually not much fun. When we reach such a point of dissatisfaction and have had our fill of suffering, when the monkey mind is exhausted, then a shift can begin to take place, a shift of emphasis.

And we discover that there is a place we can function from that is not subject to such chaos or limited by fear or neuroses, but is actually joyful, creative, meaningful and loving.

From being locked into the head with all its attendant fears and manifestations, we become aware that there is this other part of our being that operates in a different way and is actually a source of great richness, a wealth that cannot be squandered or lost. We realize that if we can come out of the endlessly distracted and discursive mind and come into the heart, then we find a deeper happiness awaiting us that we had never realized existed.

Where do we point when we say “me”? We point to our heart, don’t we? Tibetan Buddhists says the true mind is the heart. We can cultivate this heart awareness through meditation: Breathing into the area of the heart, silently repeat, “May I be well, may I be filled with loving kindness. May all beings be well, may all beings be filled with loving kindness.”

You can also repeat this to yourself throughout the day whenever your monkey mind peaks out its head.

So this is when losing your mind becomes something you really want to do!

******

See our award-winning book: BE THE CHANGE, How Meditation Can Transform You and the World, forewords by the Dalai Lama and Robert Thurman, with contributors Marianne Williamson, Jane Fonda, Ram Dass, Byron Katie, and many others.

Our 3 meditation CD's: Metta—Loving kindness and Forgiveness; Samadhi–Breath Awareness and Insight; and Yoga Nidra–Inner Conscious Relaxation, are available at: www.EdandDebShapiro.com

However you try to define meditation, it’s not that. Swami Brahmananda

Through many years of being involved with meditation we have seen how easily people miss the point, mainly because they take the practice and themselves too seriously. Many 'try' to meditate but their minds are so busy they get frustrated and quickly believe they are no good at it. Others turn into die-hard advocates of a particular method or technique and become like a salesperson trying to sell their product.

Just like Yoga, people want to own meditation and to believe that their technique is the best one. They give it a name: TM or Vipassana or Mindfulness and sometimes make outrageous claims of what can be achieved, but that is not the point. Meditation is not a technique – being quiet happens by itself, not because of following the breath in and out, reciting a specific mantra or creating a visualization.

Teachers, through their compassion, created the many methods and techniques in order to help their students to concentrate and focus their minds, to be one-pointed. No one technique is better than another; they equally give our monkey minds something to do other than drive us bananas. Many of the practices known as meditation are actually concentration; they bring the mental energy together so the mind is less fragmented. But this is not meditation.
Meditation invites us to stop, just stop, breathe and be. Just as with a musician playing or an artist painting, when we stop trying to make it happen something occurs, like the radiant sun that suddenly emerges in a cloudy sky. But because we try so hard, we identify more with the technique instead of allowing the meditation to reveal itself.

The practice of meditation easily gets put in a box: "I will practice now, at this time, at this place and in this posture, and I will do this particular method." But a method is simply an aide; it is not the experience itself. A hammer can help build a house but it is not the house. There is no doubt that through practice we can release stress and feel wonderfully peaceful, but genuine meditation is about waking up, where the mind is clear and free of obscuration.

This is not a mental process but an experiential one as meditation is an opening, a release of ego identity when all attempts to meditate, all striving, all doing stops, when there is no past or future, just radiant emptiness. It is being present – fully aware and present in every moment -- and we can do that whatever we are doing and wherever we are. It is the freedom to be fully oneself without limitations or ideologies – there is just this.

Deb's father, Richard, was on a Zen retreat where he was taught to temper his sensuality, not to give in to his senses or think of sensual things but to stay focused and single minded. While walking in the garden he then came across a pond laden with happily fornicating frogs. We think meditation has to be something special but true meditation is opening and expanding our perception, as if seeing with new eyes.

The technique becomes redundant when meditation becomes our natural state. It doesn't matter what the technique is -- when we drive to Rome the car is necessary but when we get there it is immaterial – what matters is the attitude and awareness that we bring to practice. The teacher is also more important than the technique. They must be skillful, peaceful and clear, regardless of the method or tradition they are teaching.

The moon trusts that the world will continue to go round on its axis, birds trust there will be berries and seeds to eat, trees trust the seasons will follow in the right order. Until we trust that things will unfold naturally then we are slaves to our doubts, fears and neurosis, to the constant chatter in our heads that says we are useless and don't know anything. But we don’t make the sun to rise or set. The planet is in orbit and neither we nor Jesus or Buddha or any of the wise ones run the show. Our job is simply to surrender to the moment.

******

See our award-winning book: BE THE CHANGE, How Meditation Can Transform You and the World, forewords by the Dalai Lama and Robert Thurman. www.EdandDebShapiro.com

Ms-Green-Bossy-Pants is my new nickname (♥Tina Fey).  

 The recent debate over the higher cost of green products in this economy does not take the bigger picture into consideration. I believe being exposed to toxic chemicals in everything from cleaning products to food (i.e. BPA in canned foods) has much greater health risks, both short and long term. Besides, the solution is easy - do things the old-fashioned way - organically and naturally! Lemons, vinegar, baking soda and other natural cleaning products are inexpensive and effective. Fresh food is much healthier and tastier than canned. To me, doing things in sync with nature has always made good sense, and living in a healthy non-toxic home… PRICELESS! 

 My next goal is trying to eliminate plastic from my life (admittedly no easy task)!

However, sometimes it’s easy being green, and cleaning in a healthy way is one of them.

 Here’s to a simpler, cleaner life, (except I am not writing from a mega mansion in Beverly Hills, but Thank you Laurie David for also being an eco-maniac). 

Happy Clean Green Home Blessings, ~ Cheryl Terrace, VITAL DESIGN LTD 

 The process of house-cleaning one's cluttered "furnished soul," as Cummings would put it, involves throwing open the doors and windows to the tentative, "perhaps hand" of spring, which glides in,

 arranging and changing placing

carefully there a strange

thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully  ~ E. E. CUMMINGS

It's a simple equation. When we are unhappy or angry then we will be angry with other people and increase the suffering in the world. When we are in pain, that pain gets projected onto others or blamed onto everything around us: “It's your fault I'm unhappy!” When we find our peace, as we do in meditation, then that means there is one less person suffering and one less person causing suffering to others.

We have spent the better part of our lives studying, practicing and teaching meditation in different countries around the world. Yoga and Buddhism are our spiritual roots. And we often wonder how we could possibly function without it, or how anyone functions without some form of spiritual practice as their foundation, without the awareness and sanity that meditation brings.

“We have to find a way to remove ourselves from all those messages of unfulfilled desire coming at us or we do not have a chance to clear our minds,” writes Lindsay Crouse in Be The Change. “The kind of constant busyness we are a part of is actually a kind of aggression against ourselves, because we have no peace. More importantly, we construct the world by how we think. For instance, when we are in love, we will run out in the rain with our lover, dancing and singing and celebrating, getting entirely wet; whereas most days when we open the door and we see it raining, we use an expletive. It is not the rain’s fault; there is no quality in the rain that should make us either happy or unhappy. That is coming from us. So, if the way we are seeing the world is coming from within us, then the world is a reflection of how we are thinking and feeling and acting and speaking. In that case, we need to take time out to deeply consider how we want to behave.”

Meditation equals sanity in an insane world. The Middle East is crumbling, going through massive and violent changes; Japan is facing unbelievable difficulties and suffering due to man's need for endless nuclear power; the U.S., directed by Obama, just killed the world's most infamous terrorist; while the Republicans in America are horror stricken that there is a black president. All this is sourced from the need for power, from greed, hatred, ignorance and unhappiness. As Ed recalls: “I am a Jew and you are not, meaning that, as children, we were only allowed to relate to people who were like us. I wasn’t allowed to bring a friend home or to eat in his home if he was not Jewish. I was taught to fear anyone who was different.”

How do we deal with this? How can we claim our dignity, humanity and humility, both as individuals and as a human race? The most obvious and simplest way to stop the aggression is to find our peace. And the sanest way to do that is by stopping, being quiet, and making friends with ourselves through meditation. It has the effect of lifting us out of the quicksand of the mind, out of misunderstanding and suffering. Through it we find our freedom from reactive, rash, and self-serving behavior. Having a more compassionate understanding is vital to our development and survival as a human race.

“Meditation is calming the reptilian brain,” writes Matthew Fox in Be The Change. “We have all got three brains in us: One is a reptilian brain, which is about 420 million years old, our mammal brain is half that old, and our most recent one is the intellectual creative brain. The reptilian brain is very prominent; it runs our respiratory and sexual systems; it is action and reaction. We have to calm this reptilian brain so that the mammal brain, which is the brain of compassion and is here to bring kindness and kinship and bonding, can function. I mean, reptiles do not make good lovers; that is not their thing. Meditation allows us to treat the reptilian brain well: ‘Nice crocodile, nice crocodile.’ When we calm the crocodile, then the mammal brain can assert itself. Meditation is not just for professional monks; it is a survival mechanism for us all, especially in this time of crowdedness and rubbing shoulders with people of different faiths and traditions. We all have to learn to calm our reptilian brain.”